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michaelconnor edited this page Jan 16, 2020 · 4 revisions

Brian Mackern, netart latino database, 1999-2004

Curatorial Information

Photos

Wall Text

Brian Mackern, netart latino database, 1999–2004
Text file, printed hourly on dot matrix printer
Courtesy the artist

Created by Uruguayan artist Brian Mackern, netart latino database is a hand-coded, text-only website containing hundreds of links to works by Latin American artists as well as related online discussions and criticism. An archive as well as an artwork, it is described in the introduction to an eponymous 2010 book as “springing from one person’s unprecedented decision to create such a compilation without the help of anything other than his computer and perseverance.”

Visitors to the website are greeted with a version of América Invertida, Joaquín Torres García’s 1943 drawing of an upside-down South America, rendered by Mackern in ASCII art, the lo-fi practice in which images are created using text characters. It serves as a site map, with each country labeled with its domain name—.mx for Mexico, .ve for Venezuela—and each domain name linking to lists of works identified with that country.

Mackern ceased actively updating the website in 2005 and, over time, the page has become a monument to the vulnerability of the field it documents. Although Mackern and others have been actively involved in restoring some lost works from the database, many of the catalogued sites are missing or no longer function. Here, the database is presented as a list of these links, printed throughout the exhibition for visitors to take home. They serve as a memorial to the artists Mackern documented and a means of sharing their work with new audiences.

Help yourself to a copy of netart latino database, printed periodically throughout the day.

Dimensions

NUC 1.5hx4.5x4.5 Printer 13.5x15.5x6 2x Shelves

Audio

The printer will produce 34 pages per printout. The process takes about 7.5 minutes and is pretty loud.

The printer has a "quiet" button, but we did not investigate this feature for the New Museum exhibition.

Content Warning

n/a

Technical Setup

Diagram

Components

  1. Intel NUC8i5BEK (labeled NALD (MACKERN)) with a) power cord and b) A/C adaptor
  2. USB-A → USB-B cable
  3. OKI ML320 dot matrix printer

Connect printer to computer, power on in arbitrary order.

Software

The computer triggers a printout of the piece ever hour, on the hour. This can be changed by changing the crontab:

  1. Connect a keyboard and display to the computer.
  2. Log in to the system with user rhizome, password r1996.
  3. Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T)
  4. Type crontab -e and hit enter.
  5. Edit the crontab file according to crontab.guru.
  6. Leave the text editor by hitting ctrl-x and confirm saving the buffer.

External Resources

  • 2× power outlet
  • Dot matrix printer paper, continuous, 9.5"×11" US Letter format; example product
  • Dot Matrix printer ribbons

Maintenance

Maintenance Procedures

The computer can be left turned on continuously. It is advised to turn off the printer during closing hours.

The printer will produce many copies of the Net Art Latino Database. It is advised to regularly collect the copies, separate them, and offer them to gallery visitors.

Possible Issues

Printer manual

Paper

  • Paper used up: load new paper, refer to manual Relevant portion of manual:

  • Paper jam: remove paper and any paper fragments from the inside of the printer. If removal of paper jam is not detected automatically, reset printer, refer to manual.

Character set

In case Spanish characters do not print correctly, for instance ¿ or ñ, fix with the following procedure:

To check if the printer is set to that character device, print the setup page:

  1. press SHIFT+SEL to enter menu mode.
  2. press PRINT (PARK) to print current settings.
  3. press SHIFT+SEL to leave menu mode.

The printer then spews out a bunch of three column blocks. These represent a hierachy, the first column is the GROUP, the second is ITEM, and the final column shows the value the item is set to (SET). (See manual p 70 ff.)

The correct setting is

Symbol Sets     Code Page    ISO-8859-15

If another set is mentioned here, change the setting:

  1. press SHIFT+SEL to enter menu mode.
  2. press GROUP button until Symbol Sets is printed.
  3. press ITEM until Code Page is printed.
  4. press SET until ISO-8859-15 is printed.
  5. press SHIFT+SEL to leave menu mode.

Voilà, ready to print!

OTHER TROUBLESHOOTING

If the printer is not printing, try printing the nald.txt file on the desktop – open it up, hit ctrl p, and choose pages: 1-1.

If the printer is working, it may be that the cron job is not running, try running the following command from Terminal:

bash /home/rhizome/Desktop/NALD/print.sh

If this works, the problem is with the cron job -

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