Legend says Six Angels carried the Lady in Blue to early New Mexico several times over the centuries. The Lady carried a message that some still venerate today. She reminds us that for millennia people have undertaken great journeys to carry messages to each other. Today, information technology connects us in milliseconds; the messages I.T. carries have multiple meanings. Webs of messages create the networks we inhabit, both locally and globally.
(figures from left to right)
The Angel of the Healing Word (Dolores Huerta)
The Angel of the Just Voice (Larry Casuse)
The Angel of Hope (Keith McGee)
Lady in Blue
The Angel of Cultural Distinctiveness (Henry Bake Jr. III)
The Angel of Education (Jeannie Cohen)
The Angel of Codeswitching (Malinche)
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
This mural employs the idea of the network as a conceptual interface with archival images. Early networks included large mainframe computers and ancillary hardware like printers, telephones, and fax machines. Today, the variety of elements making up a network are numerous and ever growing. Computer power is in fact based in networks. Paralleling hardware networks are social networks: the connections and relationships people form in the analog and the digital. A social network begins with the primary relationships of one person, and branches out to include secondary relationships contacts have with each other, and even tertiary relationships: friends of friends of friends. Social networks mirror I.T. networks to a degree, but the internet enables bridging to occur between unrelated members of a social network, and between networks, which is impossible for analog networks. Internet connectivity is unlimited. I.T. is thus a way to describe a framework encompassing the wired, the wireless, and the relationships crisscrossing around and between the two.
Various software platforms (OpManager, Ipswitch, Lucidchart, etc.) map I.T. networks into three-dimensional images called network diagrams or network maps (see examples). Network diagrams use a series of standard symbols (largely created by the company Cisco) to represent hardware and wireless capabilities, such as handheld devices, computers, cloud storage and firewalls. In the social arena, network symbols can be names, faces, internet handles, or GPS coordinates, etc. Both computer and social media network diagrams represent computer hardware, wireless, and/or social networks in three dimensions, so that I.T. builders, managers, and security teams can conceptualize, monitor, and secure networks. Using the electric connectivity of the I.T. network, these software can “discover” elements in a network in real time and manifest them on a screen, indicating if there are breaks in the network, as well as how and where individuals are connecting. Social network diagraming reveals when, how, and with whom people are connecting, and can be very useful for revealing the connections between contacts (or lack thereof), information which politicians and other network capital forms use for relationship building. Network diagrams can be simple, with just a few elements. Or they can be complex, with millions of hardware nodes. Network diagrams give I.T. managers a “macro” view of network connectivity in order to protect individual “micro” experiences with their devices or the internet. It is the I.T. manager’s job to see and understand the larger system, and to protect and shepherd hundreds and even millions of individual users as they roam the network. I.T. managers see and understand an important truth about the human condition: we are all connected.
I have produced a series of rubber stamps of I.T. network symbols, and with these stamps I have painted the water media studies for the mural. I will also paint the mural in the same way, with a larger set of stamps. Painting images with network symbol stamps, and then drawing the contours of images with lines between various aspects of I.T., replicates I.T. network diagrams. This technique makes the claim that today we are in fact made up of I.T. These images embody I.T. They also remind viewers that we are the sum of our connections. Each of us is a “we.” By means of I.T., we are all kin.
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
Can You Hear IT? oil on marouflaged canvas, 40' x 10', University of New Mexico Department of Information Technology, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2020
