ff0000 – Composition 1 for Office Blocks

Composition ff0000 for Office Blocks
Distributed Visual Composition
First performed as Red Screens on May 1st 2009

John Wild

Red Screen

'It was 4.31pm, a minute after the London markets had closed, and on the equities trading floor at Merrill Lynch a weary-looking trader pushed his chair back from his desk. "Bloody hell," sighed the young man, to whoever was on the end of the phone he had hooked around his head. "That was quite a day." On his desk, the bank of screens showed exactly what kind of day: the monitor recording the fortunes of the FTSE 100 was a block of almost unbroken red. Ninety of the companies suffered losses. A black day, red screens, but it could all have been much worse...' The Independent, 18 April 2000

Composition ff0000 for Office Blocks is a distributed visual Composition conceived as a networked performance for office workers.

Influenced by traders’ screens turning Red as share prices collapsed, Composition ff0000 utilises social networking sites, online networks, local media outlets, posters and flyers to encourage workers to participate in the Composition by making a few simple alterations to their own pc’s screen saver settings in order to render their screens pure RGB – ff0000 Red.

The Composition can be organised in a single office block or coordinated over multiple sites and cities.

To take part in the composition each office worker should turn off the power saving function on their monitor and set their screen savers to pure Red with a Wait time of 15 minutes.(see the monitor setup instructions).

The Composition begins at the end of the working day. 15 minutes after each worker finishes work for the evening his/her screen becomes a glowing oblong of pure red. The Composition ends the following morning when the worker returns to his/her PC to begin their following day’s work.

Windows XP

Change Screen Saver to Red

Right click on the desktop and select Properties.
This will open the Display Properties window.
Select the Screen Saver tab.
Change the Wait time to 15 minutes.
Select Marquee from the Screen Saver dropdown menu then click on the Settings button and set the background color to red.
Click on the Format Text Button and select Red from the Color dropdown menu then click ok.
Click OK on the Marquee Setup window.
Click OK to close the Display Properties window

Switch off power saving.

Right click on the desktop and select Properties.
This will open the Display Properties window.
Select the Screen Saver tab.
Click on the power button, this will open the Power Options Properties.
From the Turn off monitor dropdown menu select Never and click OK.
Click OK to close the Display Properties window

Windows NT

Turn off Power Saving

From the start menu select > Settings > Control Panel > Display.
Select the screen saver tab and click on the power button, this will open the Power Options Properties. From the Turn Off Monitor drop down menu select Never.
Click on Apply then OK.

Change Screen Saver

Return to the Screen Saver tab and select Marquee from the Screen Saver drop down menu and click on the Settings button.
Set both the background and text to red and click OK.
Set the Wait time to 15 minutes and click on Apply then OK.

Windows Vista

Download and install Marquee

Download ssmarque.scr and copy it to your System32 folder.
Once this has been completed right click on marquee.scr and scroll up and click on install.

Change Screen Saver

Open Screen Saver Settings by clicking on Start, select Control Panel, and open Appearance and Personalization.
Click Personalization, and then Screen Saver.
Select marquee from the drop-down list.
Change bothe the background Colour and the text to red.
Change the monitor power saving to Never.