Research – Hannah

Symposium Performance and Cyberformance Critique

The title of the Symposium Performance/Cyberformance, “we r now[here]” causes enough intrigue within itself. It questions the ability of the virtual world to collapse time and space to create intimate connections in the third space. Our class of Media and Performance was lucky enough to be a part of this exciting experiment, and it was no small feat.

Our class began by participating in Mobile Cam Exercises. The first of the series included engaging with another student on Adobe Connect Mobile in order to test out our connections and recognize some of the bugs and issues that could arise during the performance. My experience with this included many bugs, but so it goes in the virtual world.

The second and third exercises were discoveries and rehearsals of our intended future journey from our personal space to the collective performance space in the ADM library. Along the way, we noticed noises, connection drop outs, relevant images, and the timing of our journey.

The cast of our performance met up again in the virtual world on a collective writing app called Pirate Pad. Here, we collaborated with written text to poetically describe the experience with the virtual world and the meaning behind the title of “we r now[here].”

“People from anywhere in the world could appear as avatars and relate to one another through text, movement, and other forms of expression” So Far and Yet So Close: Lessons Drawn from Telematic Improvisation by Adrienne Jenik

Finally, on the evening of March 31^st, our performance came to life. This approximately 45-minute exhibit was presented to the curious members of our audience as they watched before their eyes, the collapse of time and space.

The entire process of the Mobile Cam Exercises, Pirate Pad, and rehearsals were meant to allow us to gain a sense of comfort within this virtual world. The timing and our images had to be well thought out which does not come without practice. When individuals engage in a conversation on a social app such as Skype, it may take a few minutes for them to get comfortable and finally forget the distance between them. In turn, “the traditional rules of etiquette” can be forgotten:

“A virtual space creates social situations without traditional rules of etiquette.” Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, “Welcome to ‘Electronic Café International’” Page 347

Our repeated and consistent use of our mobile phones and this app allow us to break the barriers of distance and further connects our spaces, allowing us to forget the limitations of the virtual world.

There are a variety of works that were discussed within our class which aided in our ability to comprehend and improve upon our performance for “we r now[here].” The Big Kiss by Annie Abrahams is a work that questions distance and its impact on intimacy shared within the virtual world. Similarly, our performance was in contest with the ideas of distance as we began physically separated in the different rooms (even by different countries as Ashley was in Canada), but connected on the same screen in the library. Eventually, we were physically together, but seemingly distanced within our separate spaces on the screen. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, the authors of Hole-In-Space, describe in their text, “Welcome to ‘Electronic Café International’” this breaking of barriers with physical separation or distance:

“We first explored composite-image space because we wanted to create a performance place with no geographical boundaries, in which we could collaborate with no geographical boundaries.” (Page 347)

There are moments within our performance that relate to our experiments with the Collective Body on flickr and the Telematic Embrace on Adobe Connect. By placing each of our cameras on our faces to create “selfies,” we are reminded back to our previous experiments that collapsed our physical separation by connecting visually in the virtual world via these similar actions.

In conclusion, this work, process, and performance allowed me to further understand the true meaning of distance and time: there isn’t really any meaning in it at all.

Mobile Cam Exercise #3

My tour from this computer classroom to the lobby is quite interesting. It begins closed in, surrounded by computers (a form of teleportation into the third space), follows down a narrow hallway, and then suddenly opens into the larger lobby of the building, surrounded by glass into the real world.

I was able to time my performance to the 10 minute mark, included intentional pauses as I continued along. I have to be careful of the echo that can happen in the classroom that I begin in, and then the hallway that I continue down. However, once I enter the open lobby, the sounds of the building take over the audio.

Wi-fi is not an issue as I am on my data plan for the duration of the performance.

Walking without the pauses in my journey takes approximately 2 minutes.

Mobile Cam Exercise #2

My location is a computer classroom on the first floor of ADM. I have chosen this classroom because, to me, it is all about connection; the room is filled with wires, internet, a projector, lights, sound speakers, and many many computers. When this room is full, the students are together physically, but they are separately engrossed by their own computers and in their own virtual world, disconnected from those around them. This reminds me of my text from our collective class text on Pirate Pad:

“If we’re speaking to each other through a technology box, are we really in the present (now)?

I feel as if I’m having a relationship with my computer, the concept of you, rather than you.”

I begin in this room. I exit through the only door, you can hear the sound of it opening and closing.

I walk down a long, cement hallway that slowly curves as I walk; there is little to no sound.

I end up at the ADM lounge on the first floor. There is a flurry of voices (at the time I scouted this location, there was no such noise as it was a Sunday evening).

I go downstairs to the lobby and join my peers.

Throughout this journey, there will be the background noise of a full ADM building and the sound of voices.

We R Here [Now] Response

We R Here (Now)

Poetic Response:

If we’re speaking to each other through a technology box, are we really in the present (now)?

I feel as if I’m having a relationship with my computer, the concept of you, rather than you.

The Ending?

I presume that the ending of this piece reflects on the true connection between people that are interacting in the third space.

I think a good ending could be someone missing an important event, such as a funeral or death, but is trying to be “present” through a webcam or Skype. Clearly the true connection is lacking and emotional ties are not as close as they could be in person.

My Adobe Connect Fail

Bridget, Kathryn and I attempted to have a conversation on Adobe Connect Mobile. We did so unsuccessfully. I’m unsure about what type of connection they were on, but I was on my data plan, so it should have been a fairly steady connection. I was unable to hear either of them for the most part. When I could hear Kathryn, it was incredibly lagged and nearly impossible to truly communicate. In regards to visuals, both of their screens were frozen for me (as you can see from the screenshot below). Throughout this entire “interaction”, our only true communication was through a Facebook chat on our phones. Seeing as how this was only 3 people trying to communicate, I am unsure of how it will work on March 31^st with even more people trying to use this app.

Research Critique V: Life is a Performance

I am intrigued by the concept of an audience member “suspending disbelief” when viewing a staged performance, such as a theatrical piece or fictional film. When the audience member enters a the doors of a theatre, takes a seat in the red velvet seat and looks up at the large stage before them, at the moment that the curtain opens, they enter the world of the performance; they are no longer sitting in a theatre, and technically, they no longer exist either. What is presented before them becomes the truth, despite any limitations that would exist in the real world: they suspend them. The reading, ‘Webcams: The Subversion of Surveillance’, refers to JenniCam in a similarly theatrical way: the audience is still expected to suspend their disbelief and enter the world of Jennifer Ringley. It is mentioned:

“The audience is content to suspend disbelief and accept slowly changing Internet still frames suggesting a place and on occasions somebody within that space. The space is a stage: we are in a darkened auditorium occasionally observing, confirming her existence, and maybe she ours, a convenient exchange agreement not unlike witness Samuel Beckett’s Not I or Waiting for Godot.”

This quote mentions JenniCam using the Internet as a stage. Although Jennifer claims on her site that nothing is staged and it is just “real life,” it is still a performance. Every single day, each person (including Jennifer) performs the variety of aspects of their life: they perform the social roles of a man, woman, doctor, mother, father, friend, or many other possible roles. Despite that these are all true and realistic positions to play, the act of participating is performance.

Research Critique IV: Open Source Jodi

I understand Jodi.org and the Jodi Art Collective as a medium for the people. In this day in age, there are many people who are fairly “tech-savvy” and are possibly able to code with ease, however, in the 1990’s, those who were so well versed in the Internet and its make-up were harder to find. Jodi.org was a Desktop Theatre piece which provided a voice to and for the greater population who could not see beneath the surface of the ominous Internet. By displaying screen grabs of coding and as described in Lecture 7: “Their aim was to deconstruct the interface of the Web and reveal the code hidden beneath the surface.”

Similarly, Women in Black in the Palace, as explored in the reading, “So Far and Yet So Close: Lessons Drawn from Telematic Improvisation” by Adrienne Jenik, is a place for Israeli women to anonymously express themselves regarding violence towards Palestinians by the Israeli state. By holding these vigils on a public space where the users are solely known by avatars, it becomes much more accessible to the greater public. As quoted in the reading:

“The Palace was an early, free, easy to use and access online visual chat-space where ‘rooms’ (appearing in discrete graphical windows) were configured within ‘palaces’ (server-hosts). People from anywhere in the world could appear as avatars and relate to one another through text, movement and other forms of expression. One’s visual appearance on screen (known as an avatar) could be chosen from a menu of offerings, or could be created from any bitmapped image and uploaded (an affordance not possible in most contemporary chat spaces at that time). As a result, the crude, cartoon drawn and photography-based bitmapped images worn by the population resulted in an extremely heterogeneous visual effect.”

These cyberspace communities, such as Jodi.org become a form of Open Source Media as they are readily accessible and non-discriminatory.

Disembodiment in Facebook/Embodiment in Telematic Vision

The quote from the reading, ‘Virtual Bodies‘, explains the disembodiment of the cyberspace perfectly: the movement from a physical presence to a concept. Take Facebook for example: in real life, a person is presented (for the most part) as their true self in their physical presence. However, upon entering the cyberspace, they are able to represent themselves as they please; one can edit photos to appear as desired and is able to take their time to craft an opinion or response before commenting on a post. In this sense, the Facebook profile is more of a concept of a person rather than a true physical representation of the person.

The telematic experiment, Telematic Vision, by Paul Sermon is an interactive installation, composed of two, identical blue couches in entirely separate locations, linked together by a monitor. The video images captured from each part of the installation are sent to a video mixer, combining the images onto the monitor before the persons, appearing as if the separate parties were on a singular couch, physically interacting with one another (bringing the virtual bodies into the third space). Participants (from both sides) react to one another by moving their bodies and physically interacting. Without this participation, the artwork or performance does not exist. Similar to the explanation of dance from the reading, this installation portrays a deep connection between performance and embodiment. However, the reading creates a dichotomy between physical presence and concept (as explained above by the example of Facebook). In Telematic Vision, it becomes holistic. Without the physical presence (participants sitting on the couch), there is no concept (the virtual presentation of the users in the third space, interacting on the monitor). These two notions (physical presence and concept) therefore become co-dependant.

The Separation of Self

No Fun was an online social experiment which made use of a popular website called ‘Chat Roulette,’ where users from around the world are randomly paired up with another user via their webcam. Usually, while many of the pairings can end up inappropriate (naked body parts, vulgar language, inappropriate actions, etc.), this performance takes the shock factor to an entirely new level.

The reading, Cyborgs, by Steve Dixon, begins with a relevant quote from René Descartes: “I comprehend, by the faculty of judgment alone which is in the mind, what I believed I saw with my eyes.” In this video, the unknowing participants were able to visibly see and understand the suicide scene that was displayed before them. While some of them viewed it as a comical prank, some of the users did believe exactly what they saw, however, they chose to separate themselves from this virtual world (the 3^rd dimension). Many of the users noticed the scenario, yet continued on with their lives and appeared almost indifferent to the disturbing image before them. As long as they remained behind their computer screens, there were no consequences, the scenario did not have to become a reality, and therefore, the user was not obligated to provide any sympathy.

This experiment opposes the theories presented by such works as The Big Kiss, which claims that intimacy and engagement can be experienced online. However, the clear lack of engagement and connection in this experiment battles such arguments. Yet, the theory reinforces such investigations as Hole-In-Space, which displays strangers, who are separated by an entire country (from New York to Los Angeles), flirting with each other. Their separation of self from the virtual world allows them to act as if they have no consequences and a superficial relationship with the person before them.

The Virtual Hole-In-Space

Hole-In-Space was an experiment that shocked the unsuspecting public one evening in 1980 in both New York City and Los Angeles. The life-size images that were displayed broke down the 2,800 miles of distance and linked complete strangers through the act of a virtual connection. Created by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, this technology was revolutionary for its time and allowed innocent passerby to experience a conversation like never before in the “virtual space,” a term coined by Galloway and Rabinowitz.

In today’s technological society, these connections are regularly had over Skype, FaceTime, and other forms of virtual conversation. However, in 1980, Skype had not been invented and cellular texting was still a few years down the road. The ability to visually connect with an individual on the other side of the country was cutting-edge and irresistible.

Some may argue that face-to-face interaction is the most personal and intimate, and while they may be right, it does not detract from the intimacy that can be shared through virtual visual communication. For example, the work, The Big Kiss, by Annie Abrams shows us that despite a physical distance that is keeping two individuals apart, the connection that can be had through virtual visual communication can hold moments and feelings of intimacy and emotion.

This virtual space that is discussed in the Galloway and Rabinowitz reading, “Welcome to ‘Electronic Café International’: A Nice Place for Hot Coffee, Iced Tea, & Virtual Space,” just like the Hole-In-Space experiment, is able to break down barriers that previously appeared impossible. The emotions, vulnerability, intimacy and friendship that were previously reserved for face-to-face connection can effectively be shared through with virtual space.