Not Found, 1000 Case Studies is an installation consisting of empty
white vitrines and ten boxes with one thousand photographs. Initially,
this might resemble the well-known modernist gesture of clearing
the gallery space of images and objects in the name of dematerialized
art. However, as the photographs numbered from one to one
thousand and stocked in the boxes indicate, the iconoclastic gesture
of the installation is a different one. Appropriating standardized
mock-up images used by advertising agencies, Daniel G. Andújar has
inserted computer error messages in the areas normally reserved for
commercial messages. The result is a visual dead-end (or maybe a
liberated zone?) and creates a strange, confusing overlap between
the information politics of the analog and digital worlds. With the
spread of LED screens in urban spaces, this overlap might soon be
the new reality. The infrastructure of publicity is rapidly changing as
new digital media emerge, and the visual character of any given city
will soon be programmed and shaped by agencies in remote places.
Site-specific billboards will become integrated into the global data
network, enforcing new mechanisms of control as well as opening
up new possibilities for hacking both the billboards and the messages
they display.