Assignments

Due Next Week: February 18-24 (Chinese New Year) for Individual Skype Meeting

1 – Project Hyperessay #1: Concept

For the first installment of the Project Hyperessay, formulate an initial concept for your final project based on what we have learned and created in class so far this semester. We will discuss final project ideas during our individual Skype meeting.

See Project Hyperessay in Project Assignments for additional information.

Due in Two Weeks: February 25 (Desktop Theater)

2 – Reading

1. Adrienne Jenik, So Far and Yet So Close: Lessons Drawn from Telematic Improvisation (pg. 81-88), Cyposium the Book, Link Editions, 2014

3 – Research Critique IV: Desktop Theater

You will be assigned an artwork to research for a short 250 word hyperessay about the work, the artist, and how it relates specifically to the topic of next week. Incorporate the reading (see above), as relevant, into your research post, discussing how it relates contextually to the work you are critiquing. Use next week’s Lecture Notes in the Desktop Theater page of the Syllabus to prepare your research, where you will find documentation and links about each of the works.

Here are additional instructions for the research critique:

• Create a new post on your blog incorporating relevant hyperlinks, images, video, etc
• Add a featured image
• Apply the “Research” category
• Post a comment on at least one other research post prior to the following class

Due in two and a half weeks: Friday, February 27 (before the spring break)

4 – Micro-project V:  My Desktop World

This project will involve a performance from the desktop and the Internet connected webcam will be our broadcast medium. This Micro-Project will be created in our next class in two weeks.

• Micro-project V in Project Assignment

Outline

Hyperlecture Week 5: Virtual Bodies in the Third Space

Works for Review

Nam June Paik, Global Groove, 1973

(Ruzana, MJ)

“This is a glimpse of the video landscape of tomorrow, when you will be able to switch to any TV station on the earth, and TV Guide will be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book.” So begins Global Groove, a seminal work in the history of video art by the Korean artist Nam June Paik, know as the “father of video art.” This radical manifesto on global communications in a media-saturated world is rendered as an electronic collage, a sound and image pastiche that subverts the language of television. With surreal visual wit and an antic neo-Dada sensibility, Paik brings together cross-cultural elements, artworld figures and Pop iconography.

Pepsi commercials appropriated from Japanese television are juxtaposed with performances by avant-garde artists John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg and the Living Theatre; dancers moving in a synthesized, colorized space to Mitch Ryder’s Devil with a Blue Dress On are intercut with traditional Korean dancers. Charlotte Moorman, her image wildly synthesized, plays the TV Cello; Paik and Moorman play the TV Bra for Living Sculpture; Richard Nixon’s face is distorted by a magnetically altered television. In an ironic form of interactive television, Paik presents “Participation TV,” in which he instructs viewers to open or close their eyes. Paik subjects this transcultural, intertextual content to an exuberant, stream-of-consciousness onslaught of disruptive editing and technological devices, including audio and video synthesis, colorization, ironic juxtapositions, temporal shifts and layering — a controlled chaos that suggests a hallucinatory romp through the channels of a global TV. With its postmodern content, form and conceptual strategies, Global Groove stands as a seminal statement on video, television and contemporary art.

Here is an excerpt reminiscent of 1960s dance shows such as “American Bandstand“:

Nam June Paik, Good Morning Mr. Orwell, 1984

In «1984», the novel he wrote in 1948, George Orwell sees the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother in a totalitarian state. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik was keen to demonstrate satellite TV’s ability to serve positive ends such as the intercontinental exchange of culture combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris and hooking up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even (including the later repeat transmissions) 25 million. The broadcast carried forward Paik’s videotape ‘Global Grove’ of 1973 – an early, pioneering concept aimed at international understanding through the vehicle of TV – by expanding the concept with the possibilities of satellite transmission in real time. Although abundant technical hitches sometimes rendered the results unpredictable, Paik deemed that this merely served to increase the ‘live’ mood. The mixture of mainstream TV and avant-garde arts was a balancing act typical of Paik and met with more misgiving from art-oriented viewers than the audience Paik termed «the young, media oriented people, who play 20 channels of New York TV stations like piano keys». The artist personally invested a large sum in the project in order to realize his vision. Asked what he would say to St. Peter at the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven, Paik instantly replied that this live show was his «direct contribution to human survival and he’ll let me in.»

Check out a few seconds from the broadcast, including a telematic toast on television!

http://youtu.be/lIZLOhlIUhU?t=49s

Paul Sermon, Telematic Dreaming, 1993

(Kathryn)

Artist Statement: Telematic Dreaming was originally produced as a commission for the annual summer exhibition curated by the Finnish Ministry of Culture in Kajaani, with support from Telecom Finland, in June 1992.

Within the third space, two participants lie on beds in remote locations, but together they share a bed in electronic space. Although they are not physically together, there is a strong sense of intimacy and shared presence between the participants. This piece directly questions the sense of intimacy experienced in the third space: the “telematic embrace” of individuals united via the network. When you “touch” another individual in the third space, why do you feel a connection as though you were physically present? Why is there a sense of intimacy in the third space, even though you are remote from the other person(s). Telematic Dreaming asks these questions while looking forward to how we are increasingly engaging with one another and forming relationships in the third space.

Artist Statement: Telematic Dreaming is an installation that was created within the ISDN digital telephone network. Two separate interfaces are located in separate locations, these interfaces in themselves are dynamic installations that function as customized video-conferencing systems. A double bed is located within both locations, one in a blacked out space and the other in an illuminated space. The bed in the light location has a camera situated directly above it, sending a live video image of the bed, and a person (“A”) lying on it, to a video projector located above the other bed in the blacked out location. The live video image is projected down on to the bed with another person (“B”) on it. A second camera, next to the video projector, sends a live video image of the projection of person “A” with person “B” back to a series of monitors that surround the bed and person “A” in the illuminated location. The telepresent image functions like a mirror that reflects one person within another persons reflection.

“Telematic Dreaming” deliberately plays with the ambiguous connotations of a bed as a telepresent projection surface. The psychological complexity of the object dissolves the geographical distance and technology involved in the complete ISDN installation. The ability to exist outside of the users own space and time is created by an alarmingly real sense of touch that is enhanced by the context of the bed and caused by an acute shift of senses in the telematic space. The users consciousness within the telepresent body is controlled by a voyeurism of its self. The cause and effect interactions of the body determine its own space and time, by extending this through the ISDN network, the body can travel at the speed of light and locate itself wherever it is interacting. In “Telematic Dreaming” the user exchanges their tactile senses and touch by replacing their hands with their eyes.

Paul Sermon, Telematic Vision, 1993

(Bridget, Hannah)

“(…) The television and sofa are caught up in an inseparable scenario. In Telematic Vision the sofa is the seat from which the spectacle of television is viewed and the spectacle that is viewed is the audience that sits on the sofa. Two identical blue sofas are located in dispersed remote locations. In front of each sofa stands a video monitor and camera. The video camera in each location sends a live video image (…) to the other location. The two images are mixed together, via a video effects generator, and displayed on the monitors in front of each sofa in both remote locations simultaneously. Two more video monitors, displaying the same image, are added to both locations, and stand one metre from the arms on both sides of each sofa. The theatre of the spectacle is complete. The viewers in both locations assume the function of the installation and sit down on the sofas to watch television. At this point they enter the telematic space, watching a live image of themselves sat on a sofa next to another person. They start to explore the space and understand they are now in complete physical control of a telepresent body that can interact with the other person. The more intimate and sophisticated the interaction becomes, the further the users enter into the telematic space. The division between the remote telepresent body and the actual physical body disappears, leaving only one body that exists in and between both locations. Assisted by the object of the sofa and the scenario of the television consciousness is extended and resides solely within the interaction of the user. Telematic Vision is a vacant space of potentiality, it is nothing without the presence of a viewer and the interactions of a user who create their own television program by becoming the voyeurs of their own spectacle.”

The original concept and structure of Telematic Vision is an open framework, where the artwork itself emerges only through the participation of users and through their lived experience at a given moment in space and time. Bluntly put, the experience is the artwork. Therefore, sources representing such phenomenological information, whether textual, oral or visual, become the pivotal points of interest in finding a strategy to document an artwork with this type of structure. The case study has thus been designed as a multi-layered qualitative phenomenological research initiative into the field of aesthetic perception and embodied experience. The focus is on the assessment of the contextualised impact.

Turn your sound off to avoid the buzz:

All of the above examples demonstrate the actions of bodies as they interact with one another across distances in the third space. How these distances are collapsed is of great interest (and bodies too), because ultimately, we do not lose connection or sense of contact despite geographical separation. This is the great phenomenon of our day, as each of us, tethered to our mobile devices, in a near-constant state of connection and interaction in the third space.

Micro-Project III: Disembodied

I will go over them outside of class and give you feedback in the Assessment Report #2 (prior to our next Skype session). Take a couple of screen shots and upload them to our Flickr group page so that the class site reflects the project. We’ll do this each week with all the various Micro-Projects.

Symposium Performance

A review of critical dates and preparation for our class performance for the Art of the Networked Practice | Online Symposium, opening night, March 31 via Adobe Connect:

• Wed. March 25, 5 pm – 6:30 pm lecture by Helen Varley Jamieson as part of the InterActions Lecture Series, ADM Library Screen Room
  
• Wed. March 25, 7:30 – 9:30 workshop/rehearsal by Helen and Annie Abrahams during our regular class time in B1-14 & over Adobe Connect
  
• Tuesday, March 31, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm setup and performance via Adobe Connect
  

Unless you can make the latter two events, and preferably all three, you will not be able to participate in the performance. So make sure your calendars are marked, professors are contacted, and that you are fired up and ready to perform! I assure you it will be a lot of fun and will be viewed by attendees from all over the world. A true global event! I am going to open it up to a few former OSS students in order to have approximately 10 – 12 performers in total.

Final Project

Anyone who has an idea for the final project, share it now, so that the rest of the class can think about ideas for their own work. As you can see from the Assignments for next week (Chinese New Year), the first of three Hyperessays is due, in which you will rough out a concept for your work, with any relevant images, links, video that help to illuminate the idea. All of this is stated in the Project Hyperessay assignment.

The best way to think about your final project is to break it down into two components: (1) general idea, (2) platform. Here is what I mean:

(1) general idea: this would be derived from any number of topics, readings, artworks we have looked at and will continue to look at over the coming weeks. For example: the body as instrument; disembodiment, the third space, collective narrative, the digital native, virtual bodies, cyborgs, open source, etc. The subject of Hyperessay #1 (Concept)

(2) platform: you need to decide how you want to present the work in a specific software platform. For example, we have used Skype, Adobe Connect, Max, Photo Booth, Flickr, Vimeo, and Facebook so far in class. There is also Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Google Hangout, Facetime, and a multitude of social media and webcasting tools you are already familiar with. The subject of Hyperessay #2 (Technical Realization)

The solution to a final project is putting together the idea and the platform into a work that bridges your practice or interests or fascination with online media.

Skype Sessions

Because we don’t have class next Wednesday, I am organizing 30 minute individual Skype sessions to discuss your final project. You need to have your Project Hyperessay complete before we meet so we can discuss. Although it’s part of the holiday, I am hoping we can schedule the Skype meetings during Wed-Fri. Feb.18 – 20. If any of you are not available, we can do them on Tuesday Feb. 17 or Monday the 23rd of Feb.

What is the Third Space?

“First Space: includes all forms of a direct spatial experience, which can be empirically measured and also present in geographies.” This is the physical world, the “known world,” the world around us, the geographical world, the world that is mapped, the world on the ground.

“Second Space: refers to the spatial ‘representations,’ cognitive (or mental) processes as well as modes of construction, which give rise to the birth of geographical “imaginations.” This is the virtual world, the representational world, the world of the symbolic, the psychological, constructed, derived, fabricated, cerebral space.

Third Space: “a third term that disrupts, disorders and begins to reconstitute the conventional binary opposition (between the real and the imagined) into an-Other that is more than just… the sum of the parts… then proceeds to fuse (objective) physical and (subjective) mental space into SOCIAL SPACE.” This results in a third space as shared, social space: collective space, transcending the first and second spaces as a place of “OTHER,” a place of open possibilities, a place of NEW POTENTIAL for going beyond the physical and the representational in a shared space.

In the context of this class, the third space as a social space is the the space of the network, the space we inhabit electronically, TOGETHER, enabling many-to-many forms of interaction with one another.

This is why third space experience is so provocative. It is outside of conventional notions of time and space, not limited to those rules and limits of the real world. Thus, it is transcendent, it is connected, it is spatial in terms of a sense of active play that takes place in a space without borders like worm holes, instant trajectories that defy distance and geography.

(quotes are from: Edward Soja’s “The Spatial Turn and the Concept of the Thirdspace,” from Ikas & Wagner’s comprehensive collection, “Communicating in the Third Space.”)

Virtual Bodies, Steve Dixon

“As electronic media proliferate, whole societies at a time become discarnate, detached from mere bodily or physical “reality” and relieved of any allegiance or to a sense of responsibility for it…” – Marshall McLuhan

We have been discussing disembodiment for a few weeks: from our alterations in the mediascape to our immersion in the third space. What are the implications of becoming what Steve Dixon calls “virtual bodies.” And what are the political and social ramifications as suggested by Marshall McLuhan.

Steve Dixon argues that the performer is not inherently disembodied because they remain in a bodily state regardless of the medium: stage, computer, etc. However, as we unite collectively in the third space as potential and soon actual performers, are we in fact disembodied in relation to our own individual space, united electronically in a virtualized third space environment? This is a complex argument.

I seemed to be pulled between the two extremes of an imaginary spectrum: the abjection of flesh and the sanitization of technology. – Susan Kozel

Susan Kozel performed for a month in Telematic Dream, the third space installation created by Paul Sermon. She had the opportunity to engage with a number of people: sometimes violently, sexually, playfully, and artfully as a dancer.

Does  this statement suggest that when the body enters into cybernetic interaction with other bodies in the virtual space, there is an internal disconnect, a vertigo, and dissociation between mind and body?

Is there something lost in the immateriality of the third space, in which we can’t physically touch each other or objects across the distance? Does this loss of the tactile effect intimacy in the space? Does it alter our sense of reality? Is reality changed in the third space? Is it a sense of reality that is specific to the medium? If so, then our sense of reality in the everyday is truly altered, because each of us enter into the third space knowingly or unknowingly nearly every day. It is this altered sense of reality that I refer to as the “post reality.”

 “Our virtual rapport had a greater physicality and intimacy than our real engagement.” – Susan Kozel

Is this possible? Can the virtual touch, the virtual connection, the virtual relation have a greater physical quality and intimacy than the face-to-face? If this is true, than our virtual lives might be the new reality. I would equate this phenomenon to the “suspension of disbelief,” a term used in the theater to denote the “realness” of an action on screen, though not real, can effect us more emotionally than events or situations in real life.

The Telematic Embrace

British Theorist Roy Ascott defines the telematic art in the following way:

“In a telematic art, meaning is not created by the artist, distributed through the network, and received by the observer. Meaning is the product of interaction between the observer and the system, the content of which is in a state of flux”

In the Telematic Embrace Micro-Project, we are not just sending and receiving information through the network, we are interacting with one another via the network, the network is mediating our actions, the network is the space of our engagement, our telematic embrace.

Let’s move to the Telematic Embrace Micro-Project project page and begin this workshop together, which will be our first preparation towards the class performance for the symposium.

Assignments for next two weeks

We will review all assignments for the next two weeks, including the Project Hyperessay #1 (Concept) as preparation for our individual Skype sessions, as well as artwork assignments for Research Critique IV: Desktop Theater.