world wide hole ' connecting the whole wide world

Imagine being able to dig a tunnel through the earth, imagine looking down into this hole you've just dug and being able to see someone at the otherside. Imagine being able to talk to this person, and to any other person where ever you dig a tunnel!

 

World Wide Hole makes this possible!

 

The goal of world wide hole is to open virtual holes all over the world. Each of these virtual holes would be able to connect to any other hole.

 

Imagine a world where there would be holes everywhere, walking in the park in new york city, you stumble upon a hole, and find yourself face to face with a poodle and its owner in Paris, France. Sitting waiting for your metro in Tokyo, you look down and talk to someone waiting for their metro in Sydney, Australia! The possibilities are endless.

 

World wide hole is a nonprofit opensource art project which means you can participate too!

 

Start making a hole in the world today! You can find instructions on how to make a hole in the howto section here.

Why should we make a world wide hole network?

 

I believe that it is important to use technology in what could seem to be an absurd way.

Disguising a video conference as a hole is a way to symbolize the magic of being able to see someone on the otherside of the earth. Today being to telephone anyone almost anywhere in the world has become normal, we forget how amazing it is to be able to hear someones voice who is thousands of miles away.

 

Creating holes is a way to connect in a non logical way. Instead of connecting to people we choose to connect to, we could stumble upon a hole and connect with someone we would of never met otherwise. Virtual holes can be a way to connect different cultures, or different classes of people. My hope is that the world wide hole can be a network connecting diverse people all over the world in a simple human way.

 

There are endless possible uses of virtual holes, some of my favorites are;

 

a hole for peace, making a hole between Israel and Palestine, etc holes between schools

connecting a school in the U.S.A with its sister school in Mexico. Holes in the metro, holes in parks. Giants holes between busy city centers. Holes in Night clubs, imagine dancing in Madrid with people in Moscow.

 

 

the goal of world wide hole is to open holes in public spaces, where access to video conferencing is not common. In the business world video conferencing has been a common tool for years, with such programs as skype, this technology has become accessible to anyone with a dsl connection, however this possibility still is unknown to many. I have been surprised each time i opened a hole how many visitors have been amazed by this possibility. In many cases people would not believe that the people they saw in the hole where alive somewhere else in the world, thinking that this must be a prerecorded video.

 

Space v.s. Time

 

At first it seems that a virtual hole is just the same as any video conferencing tool, aside that its on the floor and disguised with a little dirt. The main difference is that it connection in space not time. In general we choose a time to connect to a person or place, we also choose the time when this connection ends. With a world wide hole, the connection is always open. This distinction changes the dynamic of the connection. To have a conversation with someone at the other side of the earth, we could plan a time to meet at a hole. With world wide holes there is no choosing to call someone or choosing to hang up the phone. 2 holes are connected, this parallels the reality of a real physical tunnel. Holes are also the possibilities of random meeting between 2 or more people in different physical places. This possibility of connecting distant places will also hopefully give us a greater apreaciation of the reality of the big ball we all live on.

 

General musing

 

I believe that we are at a point in time where we can use our technological capabilities to transform our humankinds conditions. World wide hole is an ideal. I imagine a world where we use screens to empower ourselves to see our reality instead of using screens to spend time watching televised fantasies. I believe there should not be any one way holes, when someone can see you, you should be able to see them too. I believe that giving the most of us the possibility to communicate with the largest amount of other people will bring harmony to this world. I believe that humans are essentially good. There are only bad actions. I believe a lot of other things too, and i am looking forward to living the rest of my life in a community of human beings full of bright potential and possibilities.

 

now back to holes ;-)

My story of holes

My story with holes started as a child, like many children i believed if we dug long enough we would end up at the other side of the earth, so with my sister we woudl spend hours digging deep holes in the beach hoping to make it to china. Later in 2005 in a dream i had the idea of making a virtual hole through the floor, using a screen and a webcam. I was able to realize this vision during an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in febuary 2005. The exhibition "Air Cambodia" was right after we took a trip to Cambodia for a workshop. This was the first time i traveled to the other side of the world, During this trip i dreamt of making a virtual hole between Paris and Cambodia. This dream has still not come true, but it was transformed into the project World wide Hole.  My first chance to test the world wide hole came in the summer of 2006 when i was invited to connect to community centers in London and Paris. We had som etechnical difficulties and ended up not having sound going from paris to london, however we stil foudn ways to communicate by writing notes 
and making silly faces. The next occasion came in 2007 when Silke Bitzer invited me to show a hole, in the Exhibition "rewind < > fastforward at the Kunsthaus L6 in Freiburg, Germany. During the month of the exhibition we connected this hole to a community center in berlin, an exhibition in Grenoble France, My friend Gabes house in California, and my own studio in berlin. During the time i was connected to the hole i was lucky t have some very nice interactions with visitors on the other side. I remember on Young women with a baby in her arms who was amazed that we could be in berlin, she kept on repeating " this is so amazing! I didnt knwo this was possible! I had a little boy ask me if i was chinese! ( i imediately understood where he was coming from due to my past experiences as a child mentioned above) I had another young child tell me in french " t'est beau" you are beautiful. One guard who was keeping the whow in Freiburg was also very intrigued by the hole. During the entire show whenever he was on duty he would bring every visitor to the hole, explaining to them how it worked. These experiences confirm my feeling that virtual holes could bring positive moments in our everyday lives.