New Media History and Theory Randall Packer

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Research Critique: Telematic Dreaming (Paul Sermon, 1992)

Pohsuan

Tuesday, Mar 13, 2018 - 12:52:13 pm

@ The Studies of Art, Media and I Have Never Discovered

Telematic Dreaming was created by Paul Sermon in 1992. The performance has two double beds located within both locations, and the above projector turns a bed into the support of high-resolution images that show a partner, intimately alive although being thousand kilometers away. Just like two people lie in the same bed via virtual display.

In my opinion, the work demonstrated Read more →

Categories: Research

Tags: Electronic Café International | interaction | long distance | Paul Sermon | Telematic Dreaming

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Randall Packer

Mar 13, 2018 - 02:11:50 pm

Very interesting Pohsuan, the project you mentioned that brought together New Yorkers and Taiwanese nationals. It resembles very much the Hole in Space project by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, when they connected New York and Los Angeles in 1980. It also reminds me of their Electronic Café project, which was created to connect different cultures in LA. In the earlier part of your essay, you talk about how strangers interact with less inhibition and less fear of touch than would be typical in "real life." That is very true, and it would good to know why you think this is the case. In other words, although people are separated geographically, there is still a quality of intimacy. I would review the essay by Roy Ascott, "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace," where he talks about engagement across networked spaces, in which the content of the artwork is the human exchange and communication. You are very right though in pointing out how Paul Sermon asks the participants to communication through their bodies, a very powerful way of demonstrating how intimacy can be achieved in telematic space. We will certainly explore this idea further tonight when Paul Sermon is our guest speaker.

Research critique: Telematic dreaming, 1992

Vanessa

Tuesday, Mar 13, 2018 - 11:29:45 am

@ When art meets technology!

In 1992, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz concluded the captivating article “Welcome to Electronic Café International,” with the following line.

If the arts are to take a role in shaping and humanising emerging technological environments, individuals and arts constituencies must start to imagine at a much larger scale of creativity.

The same year, Paul Sermon created the above Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Mar 13, 2018 - 12:11:29 pm

Very interesting conclusion: that there is in fact love in the telematic embrace. Paul Sermon was a student of Roy Ascott and you can see how Telematic Dreaming directly engages Ascott's question by constructing an installation that tests, examines and critiques this complex idea. You are right in that the participants of Telematic Dreaming are sensing real intimacy despite geographical separation, and despite the mediation of their bodies in the third space. You begin with the quote about scale, it would have been relevant and appropriate to the use of that quote, if you are going to reference Hole in Space, that while Telematic Dreaming involves only two participants at a time, Hole in Space, is a public sculpture that essentially scales up the possibilities for the telematic embrace. It would be a good question for tonight's lecture by Paul Sermon, to discuss exactly what happens when telematics are scaled, and does this introduce something more powerful in terms of telecommunications art that brings people together in evocative ways.

Telematic Dreaming

Kapi

Tuesday, Mar 13, 2018 - 07:56:45 am

@ Kapilan Naidu

Telematic Dreaming by Paul Sermon is perhaps the most seminal and forward looking artwork from the early nineties that truly embraced the future promised by the rise of telepresence.

https://vimeo.com/44862244

The work bridges the physical distance between two people in two separate locations and brings them together into the same “composite-image space”. This work bucks earlier trends of creating virtual realities to Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Mar 13, 2018 - 11:50:08 am

Excellent Kapi! As Roy Ascott discussed in his essay, Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace, the participant is essentially responsible for creating the content of the work, contrary to traditional art in which the artist maintains control. This relates to your mention that the rules of etiquette changing in the virtual space, as you pointed out. You also pointed out the critique of intimacy in the telematic space, which I believe is particularly relevant in Telematic Dreaming. One of the things we will be discussing in class this evening is why does the virtual space create a safety zone for interaction, and why do we experience intimacy despite geographical separation. Great research and very well written!

Research Critique | Telematic Dreaming, 1992

Adrian Tan

Tuesday, Mar 13, 2018 - 02:05:39 am

@ Adrian Tan

In surveying Paul Sermon’s artwork Telematics Dreaming (1992), we delve into how telematic art has come into being not simply as a result of technological advancements in computer-mediated telecommunications networks but also its value in contesting similar formal concerns of conceptual art formulated under the rhetoric of “dematerialization” of the art object.

As an art form, telematic art (similar to notions Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Mar 13, 2018 - 12:01:11 pm

Excellent Adrian. I was very impressed with the way in which you development two key ideas: (1) the idea of tension in the telematic artwork and how that tension becomes activates by the viewer-participants; (2) the changing nature of the art object to one of dematerialization, becoming essentially a space that is a fluid and changing environment for behavioral actions. I think the idea of tension is particularly relevant in regard to the question of intimacy in the telematic embrace, which is a major concern of Ascott, Sermon, Galloway, and Rabinowitz. They are all questioning how distance can be a transcendent experience that is engaging in new and surprising ways. Why is it that the virtual touch creates a feeling closeness? Paul Sermon will address this very question in class tonight in regards to empathy and how it is achieved via networked communications. It is interesting to note that when Paul Sermon created Telematic Dreaming, he discovered in the process of making the work that it was performative, something he didn't expect. So we also have to think about how this tension you are discussing manifests itself performatively in the work. I think that's a crucial question at the core of the behavioral art.

The Eternal Frame

Kapi

Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018 - 03:49:15 pm

@ Kapilan Naidu

Understanding Ant Farm and their works would be impossible without first understanding American culture from the early 50s to the late 70s. The rise of the automobile’s importance in American society was one that began as the would-be members of the collective were still children. Freeways ripped through cities as the American life began to revolve more and more around the Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 27, 2018 - 03:57:20 pm

Excellent Kapi! Actually the memorial of Kennedy is the Eternal Flame, which is was then altered as the Eternal Frame to accentuate the media element of the work. Excellent research piecing together Kennedy's history and relationship to the medium of television. Yes, the debate with Nixon launched his Presidency and then the assassination ended it, both of which are iconic televisual moments. And it is most appropriate that you make the connection to 9/11, another tragic event that was burned into the public consciousness through the televisual image broadcast around the world. The Eternal Frame may have been made in 1975, but Ant Farm was ahead of its time in terms of understanding the power of the mediated image. Excellent work!!

Vanessa

Feb 27, 2018 - 04:02:32 pm

This research is thorough and comprehensive! Some of the great points I missed in my are very well explained in your text, such as the social background and media culture at that time, and the importance of the work is brought to current light by the comparison with 911. You even discovered the title which pays tribute to the torch of JFK‘s gravesite! Thank you for the great piece!

Research Critique: Ant Farm and Media Burn(1975)

Chloe

Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018 - 02:09:17 pm

@ I see Technology in Art

Ant Farm

Ant Farm was an avant-garde application of architecture, graphic arts, performance, environmental design practice and other aspects of hyper-futurism, founded in San Francisco in 1968 and ended in 1978 by Chip Lord and Doug Michel.The works made by Ant Farm made a big progress among previous works mentioned in the class is that it made good use of the Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 27, 2018 - 02:25:20 pm

Excellent piece. I particularly like the way you begin by defining the hippie movement, the American counter-culture that was focused on critiquing the mainstream norms of society, challenging them, and often upending them as Ant Farm did in many of their works such as Cadillac Ranch and Media Burn. You make an excellent account of how Media Burn incorporated the trappings of the political speech, and the iconic American car (Phantom Dream Car) to stage its attack on mainstream television. I think it also shows how the counter-culture was determined to "crash through" the norms of society to paint a more utopic vision of what society could be by appropriating the iconic aspects of the culture and reshaping them according to their own narrative. It is this construction of an alternative narrative that lies at the heart of Ant Farm and its critique of American culture.

Research Critique: Cadillac Ranch (1974)

JP

Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018 - 02:02:06 pm

@ JP's ADM journey

Introduction

Cadillac Ranch is a public art installation and sculpture in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. It was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm, and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 27, 2018 - 02:34:48 pm

You made some excellent points, particularly how Cadillac Ranch was intended to be a public sculpture that could be altered by the viewer, a quality of interactivity. You captured many of the important points here, particularly the American obsession with car culture from the 1950s, which I suspect was not just limited to America. I would have like to see you expand on the role of the artist, which I agree, is an important aspect of Cadillac Ranch, as the work engages the public in a critical examination of the mainstream culture. Speaking of which, what exactly is the significance of the Bruce Springsteen song? By popularizing Cadillac Ranch, this served to amplify its social critique by essentially "memorializing" the work and burning it into the lexicon of popular culture. Cadillac Ranch thus becomes a kind of memorial to the dream and utopian, future-quality of the design of the American car, which of course has decayed in its obsolescence.

Research Critique: The Eternal Frame, 1975

Vanessa

Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018 - 01:22:56 pm

@ When art meets technology!

https://ubuvideo.memoryoftheworld.org/AntFarm_TheEternalFrame_1976.mp4

The Eternal Frame, 1975, Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco

The Eternal Frame (1975) is the artists’ re-enactment of the infamous J.F.K assassination in 1963, which is captured on Zapruder’s home video recorder. The collaboration is done by Ant Farm, a collective of radical architects who works with video, performance, and installation in the late sixties and seventies, Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 27, 2018 - 01:49:21 pm

Excellent research, and I am so pleased that you found the full length video of the Eternal Frame, which I looked all for! You captured the importance of this work perfectly: it speaks to the power of the televised image as an iconic representation of a moment in time. And as you point out, what accentuates the relevance of the televised image in the case of Kennedy, is that he was so closely aligned with the medium as a result of the first televised debate with Richard Nixon. My only comment is your conclusion: you bring up the free speech movement at UC Berkeley, where the exhibition took place, but it would have been helpful to make the connection to Ant Farm and this particular work. You have other observations that might have made for a better conclusion related to the mediated, iconic image.

Research Critique: Ant Farm and Cadillac Ranch (1974)

Pohsuan

Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018 - 01:21:21 pm

@ The Studies of Art, Media and I Have Never Discovered

Ant Farm

The collective was founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels. The group’s initial goal was to reform education, but eventually expended their projects to a deeper level of reflection and criticism of popular culture. Refer to they self-described:

“art agency that promotes ideas that have no commercial potential, but which we think are important vehicles of cultural Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 27, 2018 - 02:01:23 pm

Good research! I enjoyed seeing the "pink" version of Cadillac Ranch, which I wasn't familiar with. It's interesting how Ant Farm decided to put the work into a public space where it could be modified by the viewer, making it more interactive as a public sculpture. It might have been worth pointing this out in your essay. You reference a quote that says that Cadillac Ranch serves as an annihilation of both the tv and the car, but that requires some explanation. What exactly is the irony of exposing the tailfins of the Cadillac's while burying the nose in the ground? What do you think Ant Farm is trying to say here? Is it possible that they are both glorifying this symbol of car culture, while at the same time making an ironic statement about its glorification and obsolescence (annihilation). Also, take a look at the final concluding paragraph, I'm not sure I fully understand what you are saying here, it might just be the language. I think you are referencing an important relationship between consumerism and environmentalism, but this needs some clarification as a final statement.

Pohsuan

Feb 27, 2018 - 02:58:31 pm

Professor, thank for your reply and questions. There are exactly some paragraphs I have to do further clarification to make the critique more completed. First of all, in my opinion, why Ant Farm buried the nose in the ground is because they tried to focus on the evolution of the car's tail-fin. Refer to this essay mentioned that:

The Cadillac tailfin changed from year to year, and each year the old one went out of style,” Marquez explained. “People would say: ‘’56 tai-lfin, damn, it’s different, better get a new one! ’57—whoa, that’s really different, better get a new one.’

I think this over-consumed culture of planned obsolescence is what they wanted to emphasized through this artwork. In addition, the image of 10 burying cars on the field may also present the strong contrast between natural and artificial creation, especially this tail-fin case which lets consumer pursuit the newest instead of the most needed.

Research Critique | Ant Farm's Media Burn, 1975

Adrian Tan

Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018 - 01:07:19 pm

@ Adrian Tan

Ant Farm (An Interview with Chip Lord, from the NMC Media Lounge at the College Art Association conference, February 23, 2018).)

In approaching and researching into the artistic oeuvre of Ant Farm (1968 – 1978), one stumbles upon numerous documents and retrospective shows about/from the visionary collective. The body of works all stack up as being ‘sublimely relevant more than three Read more →

Categories: Research

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Randall Packer

Feb 27, 2018 - 02:10:54 pm

Excellent! Your research and writing here very effectively captures the irony of the iconic Media Burn, which as you point out, has emerged as a defining 20th century artwork that critiques both automobile and television culture. And yes, as you point out, the work continues to resonate today, particularly in light of our the mediated image has such a powerful effect in the age of the Internet. We can recall the images from 9/11, which hauntingly resemble Media Burn, that have had a lasting imprint of our memory of the original event. In many ways, Media Burn suggests how the image far outlives the actual moment that produced the event, and how television amplifies that image, and how today the Internet's memetic force amplifies it still further. As you point out, this was the importance of Ant Farm, to understand so clearly and resonantly how American culture, and really the world at large, is impacted by the iconic nature of the mediated image.