Dataspace: From the Observed Object to the Participating Subject

Lilia Pérez-Romero, Frontera (Border), 2005. Courtesy of Centro de Documentación Príamo Lozada, Laboratorio Arte Alameda.

In Dataspace, each artwork had a purpose, posing questions regarding the use of technologies, their provenance, limitations, and potential risks as well as expanding on the very notion of what the virtual space is. Lozada believed that creating artwork using diverse technologies required reflection on the condition of art and its relationship to an audience. “The work is no longer simply a window through which we see reality reflected, but a portal through which we pass to have a sensory and collective experience,” he wrote in his curatorial statement. “Both the work and the viewer are in a kind of ‘dataspace,’ which represents that immaterial space generated by the human/computer symbiosis, within which it is possible to define a complex and immersive creative process.” The viewer, he asserted, was not a passive actor but instead a participating subject, resulting in a fundamental shift that positions a work as something in constant transformation.