UBI3
The shortest curve between two c-s
www.cperu.hu
A web site by László László Révész and Imre Lepsényi
Exclusively non-commercial web sites made by artists are rare in Hungary. This genre is regarded as something really unique and to be respected. Cperu.hu, a work created jointly by László László Révész and Imre Lepsényi has been on the web for nearly a year now.
Actually, with his paintings, Révész has been balancing between the possibility of commercial success and clear avant-garde for years, if this is possible at all. His paintings created in recently suggested that they would appear in their final form in a work to be completed later, and there came the next exhibition and the next exhibition… In this way the emphasis was shifted onto to life work instead of the work of art.
Révész, a dominant personality in Hungarian media art and his partner, the newcomer Imre Lepsényi, are showing something similar with this site, too. They are referring to a work to be completed later; they are throwing light upon possibilities without finishing the sentence. The basic structure of the site involves many different possibilities and maintains this subtle balance. You can see a chamber-piece collection here, at the high standard already known in connection with Révész’s media works, and surprisingly, at the same time, from the lesser-known Imre Lepsényi. They are exhibiting a series of space-time system games in front of the community of Internet-users, where each system lives an independent life, but does not really develop.
I have visited the cperu site for the third time now, and I didn’t find anything new there, although they promise continual changes in the introduction. Well, it’s all right; it seems to be moving slower than I surf. It’s happened before, and I’m afraid, it will happen again in the future.
Is it an artistic or business enterprise? As I look through the pages I would go for the latter, although it would sound more precise, if I said I had come across a site created by mixing up these two aspects, the key words of which are interface-design and flash-animation.
Interface-design is there to promote or even solve communication between people and computers. We can call it applied art or communication-design, as there is a real need for creativity in the course of building a bridge between these two completely different factors. With the help of an example chosen from the world of computer operation systems, it can also easily be seen that it really does matter what this bridge is like: whether it is strictly, austerely textual like DOS (technical, military aesthetics), or intuitively, humorously pictorial like the MacOs-derived Windows (office, study aesthetics).
Flash animation is relevant in the Internet environment. It is a technology based on vector graphics (line drawing) and animation procedures, with the help of which the animate world of images enriched with sound effects we know from the TV and cinema becomes accessible even on the present, average small band width.
It is probably due to the site’s reference character (meaning that there is no function behind it which would be represented by the effect intended to be reached by the client) that while I’m looking at the site I keep thinking about a slogan used by Necro Enema Amalgamated a few years ago: "interactivity is a lie". Well, here, except for the flashgarden maybe, I am not able to have any real influence on the process of the events anywhere. I just click somewhere and see a no-entry sign.
About the individual pieces:
The beauty of the introductory page can only be enjoyed if you move the cursor slowly. It turns out from the basic structure – and this impression does not change in the case of the smallest details – that Révész and Lepsényi are well aware of their possibilities, they know where the available routes lead. Typically their greatest- and also negligible – inconsistency is that the back to menu point also appears on the main page.
Cperu, according to its confession, makes interactive projects. The ten recommendations found here probably serve as references. Some of them are models (semi, moon, timeprism, flashGarden), life models (treee) or effects (c: at the moment only a short dance, c-clip, abc, i-dill, room-i). FlashGarden has been made with the greatest attention, where the subtle lyricism of the c (at the moment only a short dance) and the crackling consumption criticism of i-dill are asserted. However, I could not approach room-i, neither in respect of its title nor its content.
Semi promises a lot but gives you only a little: it has gone beyond simple charm, and now it seems to be half-finished.
i-dill is a work in close connection with other Révész works, it is, maybe, the most successful piece on the site. However, the function of the little circles does make you think. And with a different sign Moon shadowwalk also makes you think, but it seems to be impossible to understand, however much you try. The use of flash would be good for the only moving part, it should not have been wasted on the large surface.
The material and standard of the site are both characterised by fluctuating diversity. The fluctuation reaches its peak in the dancers-work. You can examine the space creating ability of the space changing behind the dancing couple for many minutes, but you don’t get bored with it, even if you go back ten times.
Timeprism promises excitement, and although it seems that it wants to convey a message really hard, you’ll surely never find out what it is.
ABC is a simple experience – a nice memory of your teenage years from the era of the neon light.
Treee is a pseudo-interactive piece, it does not really fit in with the others, and it is not really good with Explorer.
The trick in c-dance is that it regenerates the picture without clicking on it.
The great surprise is the flashgarden, which is playfully fascinating. It is a beautiful, well-made work, which you can admire until your brain starts to go numb. However, if you really want to find a fault in it, it has two weak points: there is no reason for the URL to be on the site, it opens up in a new window unnecessarily.
In the crew part the presence of the works of Péter Kovács is a little confusing, but the meaningless character of the answermachine and the roughly made Révész mediaworks do not point any further on either.
Maybe, if the two artists had been contented with less and if they had only put their really mature works on the site, well, there could be a commonplace here, anyway in that case it would have been a different site.