Keiji NAKAMURA:

"In Eduardo Kac's "Uirapuru" an enormous, brightly coloredfish floats above an artificial jungle beckoning us into a humorous utopiarather than burdening us with different kinds of control mecahnism of informationfrom the web. Sitting on the bench in the back and watching the fish meanderabove I was reminded of the various programs played out in Raymond Russel's"Impressions of Africa". The work involves a fairly complicatedsystem, but listening to the birds voices connected to the Internet onefeels oneself drawn into a cyber version of "Impressions of the Amazon".Whatever the mechanisms used, whether the Internet or sensors, the casualsurface of works like Kac's is hard to come by." (Judge's Review,p. 71)

Keiji Nakamura was a lecturer in the Faculty of Lettersat Doshisha University from1966-85, when he became senior curator at theNational Museum of Art, Osaka. He took the post of deputy director andchief curator of ICC in 1995. His published works include ContemporaryArt/Paradigm Lost and Contemporary Art/Paradigm Lost II.

John G. HANHARDT:

"Kac's elaborate installation invites one into an environment thatwe can explore from multiple points of view. The telerobotic fish hoversabove the landscape, embodying the artist's personal mythology which iscreated out of a dialogue with the facts and myths of the Amazonian rainforest.The viewer's interaction with Kac's installation is extended through theweb as virtual and real spaces explore an ecology of place and memory."(Judge's Review, p. 61)

Roy ASCOTT:

"Eduardo Kac eschews consolidation in favour of a kind of risk-takinghybridisation, irreverently mixing not only communications media but modalitiesof myth, metaphor and representation. It is a risk that pays off poetically,providing us with a kind of Roussel/Rousseau world, in which pockets ofcyberspace punctuate an almost mall-like plastic reality. Here the pingbirdssing the song of the Internet, the telerobotic blimp rises over a forestof fake vegetation, awakening us to the dawn of a new world, a multi-useruniverse, of VRML, streaming video and telepresence. In this jungle ofcommunications complexity, the duality of being is celebrated with a lightheartedand brilliantly orchestrated joy." (Judge's Review, p. 55)

Artist and theorist, Roy Ascott pioneered cybernetics,interactivity, and telematics in art. Currently, director of The Centrefor Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, University of Wales, Newportand the Science Technology and Art Research Centre, University of Plymouth.

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