Archive: Issue No. 34, June 2000

This month's project will not go online till June 10 when Donald Rodney's AUTOICON is previewed and an online discussion will take place from inIVA in London from 5 to 7 p.m. GMT.

In the meantime, viewers can check www.iniva.org/autoicon/dr for more information about the artist, including interview material and a slide show of his work.

AUTOICON is a dynamic internet work that simulates both the physical presence and elements of the creative personality of the artist Donald Rodney who - after initiating the project - died from sickle-cell anaemia in March 1998. The project builds on Donald Rodney's artistic practice in his later years, when he increasingly began to delegate key roles in the organisation and production of his artwork. Making reference to this working process, AUTOICON is developed by a close group of friends and artists (ironically described as 'Donald Rodney plc') who have acted as an advisory and editorial board in the artist's absence, and who specified the rules by which the 'automated' aspects of the project operate.

AUTOICON is automated by programmed rule-sets and works to maintain creative output continually. Visitors to the site will encounter a 'live' presence through a 'body' of data (which refers to the mass of medical data produced on the human body), be able to engage in simulated dialogue (derived from interviews and memories), and in turn affect an 'auto-generative' montage-machine that assembles images collected from the web (rather like a sketchbook of ideas in flux). Through AUTOICON, participants can generate new work in the spirit of Donald's art practice as well as offer a challenge to and critique the idea of monolithic creativity. In this way, the project draws attention to current ideas around human-machine assemblages, dis-embodied exchange and deferred authorship - and raises timely questions over digital creativity, ethics and memorial.

Donald Rodney made considerable use of imagery such as x-ray photography, blood samples and cellculture to draw attention not only to the medical condition that was slowly corroding his body, but more importantly as a metaphor to represent the 'disease' of racism that lay at the core of society. Please see www.iniva.org/autoicon/dr for further information on the artist and his work.