The Studies of Art, Media and I Have Never Discovered

Final Hyperessay: When Human Dance with Technology – Daito Manabe

Daito Manabe (まなべだいと) is a Tokyo-based interaction designer, programmer, DJ and new art media artist. Launched Rhizomatiks in 2006 which committed to effecting wide-scale social change by bridging the gulf to foster collaboration between media art, industry, and business. He was also selected as one of the 11 most influential people by Apple celebrated 30 anniversary of Mac mark with website tribute in 2014. In addition to high-quality, high-premium and multiple sensory-style performances, his practice is informed by careful observation to discover and elucidate the essential potentialities inherent to the human body, programming, computers and other phenomena.

Music- the medium of human and machine

Daito is also the key creative and technical director of Perfume (Japanese pop girl group) and Elevenplay (Japanese dance troupe). His past works were highly relevant to music, such as concert or music video filming, and were consisted of professional dancers and cutting-edge technology with bright rhythm and futuristic sound effects. Moreover, the performances rarely have any speech and word. Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris (MCJP) held Fertile Landscape welcoming Daito also talked about his artistic practice. Reprinted from the interview:

If I had wanted to express myself with words, I probably would have become a singer or a writer. The reason I chose music as the medium for expression precisely was that I did not want to use words. That is because I was attracted to the universality of things that are not words.

The music video, “Cold Stares”, is one of his works to present how Daito thought of the relationship among music, human and machine. This video is the collaboration between Daito Manabe and Los Angeles beatmaker, Nosaj Thing featuring Chance The Rapper in 2015. The dance piece by two dancers was produced to express the message in the lyrics—their mental situation and conflict searching for the reason of being and memories, wandering along the border between reality (the real world performed by people) and illusion (the delusional world of Computer Graphics Effect). In the design of performance, Daito frequently utilized each beat and bridge of the music to alternate the real and virtual realities, thereby creating a scenario that dancers and drones mutually support and communicate with each other. The audience seems to be drifting on a virtual-to-reality space with the rhythm of music through the six shots installed on the drones, and sometimes is in a short distance but far away from the performers. Besides, it may be discovered that the virtual reality is filled with a considerable amount of minimal polygon and glitch art. The dirty media artist Jon Cates talked about his approach and inspiration of glitch art in the interview with Randall Packer:

It should be extended to considerations about other aspects of our society beyond art, in which we ignore those who don’t fit into our social ideals of perfection and worthiness.

Unlike Jon Cates took advantage of the glitch to create the imperfections, errors and the aberrations remaining people to face this “problem”, Daito’s glitch presents the essence of the machine and differentiates the real and the virtual world in this work. Each glitch was arranged on the beats and camera movements perfectly. Jon Cates provokes the conflict and contradiction, but this work rather aims to encourage the cooperation between human and glitch. The interview and official website have more details of this work.

The cooperation between human and glitch

Anthropomorphism- Machine-as-human

In Daito’s numerous works, it could be further discussed how he handles the relationship between human and machine. Fly, one of his works in the series of drones created in 2015. The three drones are arranged three-dimensionally in real space through a tracking technology and control system, and the work, in which dancers give performances to find the possibility of a new bodily expression. Working through a set of cameras with motion capture, dancers can physically and intuitively perceive the relationship between the body and data through the computer-controlled drones.

We are constantly experimenting and thinking of ways to create a new form of dance performance by utilizing technologies such as machine and deep learning

Like Daito said, he successfully created a duet dance attended by human and machine by this work. In the first three minutes of the performance, the drones played a supporting role and kept up with the dancer’s movement, but they were able to move individually with the music in the following time as the dancers left. This solo was like to resort to the rhetoric that they are exactly alive and do not doubt their existence to the audience. Anthropomorphism is commonly considered to be the quaint and archaic activity of people far removed in time and place from the complex functioning of contemporary technological society. But anthropomorphism is widespread in modern life, so common that we take it for granted and fail to react to its peculiarity (Caporael, 1986). “When I give an order to a machine, the situation is not essentially different from that which arises when I give an order to a person” Norbert Wiener said in his book, Cybernetics in History. When modern human are used to living with artificial intelligence, Daito dropped a bombshell which reminds us do not forget ignoring the existence and possibility of the machine. However, rather than the majority of sci-fi movies or theories which narrate machine will eventually rule the earth, the author considers that Daito aims to accomplish a co-prosperity of human and machine by this work.

Mechanomorphism- human-as-machine

If anthropomorphism, referring to machine-as-human, is one face of the human machine, we might allow “mechanomorphism,” the human-as-machine, to be its other face. Mechanomorphism is the attribution of characteristics of machines to humans (Caporael, 1986). Thus, Motion, one of Daito’s work, could be a classic example of mechanomorphism. This performance was shown at an Electric Company’s Opening Ceremony in 2015. Integrating the industrial robots and dancers, it aims at making the audience feel and imagine the harmonization of human and robots.

Interestingly, compared with Fly (the previous example), this work has a completely opposite performance that the industrial robots acted alone at the beginning but the dancers joined afterwards. If the purpose of Fly is to express the soul of the machine, the piece could be seen as a demonstration how human get along with these souls. The audience may be attracted in the first half of performance that each robot handed over the cube to another and worked in cooperation, but the fascinating part should be the human dancers acted along with the robots. Nowadays, human always lead the machine and bring them life, but no one can guarantee that the situation may be completely different someday like the dancers mimicked the robot motions as machine-like dance. Nonetheless, the most impressive part is the consistent performance of human and robots (like the below image shows). The piece not only performed human-as-machine choreography but also convey what the mentality of people see machine should be in the future. In this interview, Daito also mentioned that how he is inspired by technology:

No matter how much machinery and algorithms advance, you can re-motivate them creatively in service of a new idea. That process is a lot of fun. I think it is going to become more important that humans have better faculties of judgement when inputting information.

Reference

Caporael, L. R. (1986). Anthropomorphism and mechanomorphism: Two faces of the human machine. Computers in Human Behavior, 2(3), 215-234.

Final Research Hyperessay: New Media Art and Daito Manabe

Daito Manabe (まなべだいと)

He is a new media artist and programmer based in Tokyo, Japan, and launched Rhizomatiks, a new media art company, in 2006. His end goal is not simply rich, high-definition realism by recognizing and recombining these familiar elemental building blocks. Rather, his practice is informed by careful observation to discover and elucidate the essential potentialities inherent to the human body, data, programming, computers, and other phenomena, thus probing the interrelationships and boundaries delineating the analog and digital, real and virtual.

When human meet machine

As the same as other new media artist, Daito Manabe specialize in studying the interaction, relationship and boundary between human and machine. If Magnet TV provided a medium that human can communicate with the machine, Daito’s Yaskawa Electric Robot Village delivered a message how human live with machine together. This performance was shown at a Electric Company’s Opening Ceremony on June 1st, 2015. Integrating the cutting-edge technology, the performance was aimed at making the audience feel and imagine the collaboration between humans and robots as well as the new possibilities of Yaskawa Electric. In the beginning of this performance, audience usually were attracted by the five automatic robots, futuristic music and light effect, then the eyes will turn to the dancers. In the second half of the performance, the robots and dancers had a artistic collaboration which displays the harmony of human and technology in his ideal world. As he thought how machine can achieve what human cannot in this interview:

No matter how much machinery and algorithms advance, you can always re-motivate them creatively in service of a new idea. That process is a lot of fun. I think it’s going to become more important that humans have better faculties of judgement when inputting information.

In the musical realm, you’ll no longer have to be able to play an instrument. AI is going to compose all sorts of new music for us. In the next era, it’s going to be all about foresight and rational judgement, the ability that makes us determine whether something is truly good.

The collaboration between human and machine

New media art tends to a medium or performance that communicates and connects between or among the participants in technological ways. The participants can be human, animals, machines and everything rather than only between human and machine. In Norbert Wiener’s book, Cybernetics in History he also mentioned that:

When I give an order to a machine, the situation is not essentially different from that which arises when I give an order to a person.

If you ask artificial intelligence “Does you speak English?”, then it will commence to analyze the answer should be “Yes, I can.” and enter the three words to you. However, what is the difference of this answer when you ask a real person? Like the 1995’s Japan animation “Ghost in The Shell” narrated, the boundary between human and machine has become more and more blurred. Human are no longer to be seen as a carrier of independent and creative thinking, because no one cannot guarantee machine will have their own awareness. Until now, “what is human?” this question is still controversial in philosophy. Thus, New media art more like a realm to perform the feedback (or a reciprocal exchange) that the participant which learned and responded after receiving an information from each other, and the two-way interaction is not always given by human who interact with human.

If my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood and has been obeyed.
– Norbert Wiener

From the early example Nam June Paik’s Magnet TV which human interacts with machine in 1965 to 1980’s piece, Hole in Space, which multiple people should cooperate together. Or like Jon Cates demonstrated the result after human meet the non-physical objects, glitch, these cases all gave us a new understanding of interactivity through the different ways and participants. Perhaps we can find the interaction between machine and machine, animal and machine and so on we never thought in the near future.

Additionally, unlike a dance performance or static painting which audience may only be a passive receiver. Everything has been arranged steadily on the stage. An unpredictable performance is the majority of new media art to seek. Such as in the online symposium Annie Abrahams asked every participants close their eyes, everything became more uncertain, and participants should be more concentrate and aware of the surroundings by their ears. Or another piece, Chalk and Blackboard which the classmate shared and designed by Hsin-Chien Huang, you never know what words the previous audience inputted on this third-space. Maybe there are dirty words or a love sentence, the piece is still bare but beautiful because of these unstable factors (or participants). Like Roy Ascott illustrated in his book, Behavioral Art and the Cybernetic Vision, “An important characteristic of Modern Art, then, is that it offers a high degree of uncertainty and permits a great intensity of participation”. The performer is no longer passive, but they can involve in and shape the outcome of a work.

Human and Machine

Besides, Daito has been the pursuing possibilities of relationship and interaction between the body and technology by interacting with a variety of hardware and devices such as robot arms and motor-controlled floating balls. In his 2015 work, Fly(dance with drones), objects are arranged three-dimensionally in real space through a tracking technology and drone control system, and the work, in which dancers give performances, has been presented so as to find the possibility of a new bodily expression.

We are constantly experimenting and thinking of ways to create a new form of dance performance by utilizing technologies such as machine and deep learning

In this performance, working through a set of cameras with motion capture, dancers can physically and intuitively perceive the relationship between the body and data through the computer-controlled drones. As there are two kinds of drone movements – one motion produced by tracking dancer’s movements but also an artificial motion operated on the software – dancers have to be perfectly trained to interact with the drones because they could not always predict how they would move. As my aspect, this piece was not only a meditation on how we see each other and how machines see us, but also narrate how human learn and adapt with machine. More details: site

Who am I, this question always is seen as the beginning of philosophy. However, as the medium of human and technology, new media artists pointed out this issue again and again with their artworks.

Through social networking sites, for example, we all represent different slices of our personality. How can we make sense of the world when we are overwhelmed with different sources of information, when there is such a fluid boundary between fact and fiction? -Maria Chatzichristodoulou

When people participate in The Big Kiss or Telematic dreaming, why they are willing to embrace or even kiss with other person who may just first meet? If they kiss each other in the virtual space, does it also mean that they have a real contact? Or being a hater on the Internet, are they troll in the real world either? Perhaps like this movie Inception, for some people the dream without social constraint is their real world. However, Annie Abrahams demonstrated and gave us a better understanding the nature and quality of the third space environment we increasingly find ourselves in. In my viewpoint, the virtual space inspire our inner personality which is under the social constraint. In here, people become more completed and comprehensive, because they use the past cognition and knowledge to challenge the things they never do.

There’s a certain poetry to the idea of drones seeing humans as human, rather than as lines of code, or however computers “see” things. Was this an attempt to humanize drones, or further our own feelings of detachment?

In these works, the questions are asked again and again:

1. What is the end when human meet technology?
2. What the viewpoint that human see technology and technology see us?

Daito Manabe is seeking and developing a ideal utopia that human and machine live and work harmoniously. Machine see human as human, human can collaborate with machine as human. Alternatively, we are all machine. Like the story of Ghost in The Shell illustrate, the border between human and machine is becoming ambiguous. Even we do not know what human should be like. In the three-space, we explore and learn ourselves again just like the case of Telematic Dreaming human lying besides a stranger as a couple, but we only have a real body in the reality. With the technology, human is walking between the reality and the illusion.

Final Research Hyperessay: Key Work Selection

Team Up with Dancing Drones

This film uses drones, 3D capture and performative dance to create a sense of alternating between real and digital worlds.

The music video, “Cold Stares”, is a collaboration between Daito Manabe and Los Angeles beatmaker, Nosaj Thing featuring Chance The Rapper in Nov 2015. The dance piece by two dancers was produced to express the message in the lyrics—their mental situation and conflict searching for reason of being and memories, wandering along the border between reality (the real world performed by people) and illusion(the delusional world of Computer Graphics Effect).

The resulting film is both jarring and seamless, with the dancers shifting between real and virtual realities so quickly that the line between the two worlds vanishes. “We are constantly experimenting and thinking of ways to create a new form of dance performance by utilizing technologies such as machine and deep learning,” says Daito Manabe. There are two kinds of drone movements, a motion produced by tracking a dancer’s movements and an artificial motion operated on the software. At first, dancers had to be trained to interact with the drones because they could not predict how they would move, but eventually they were able to dance with the drones as closely as 10cm away from them. As my aspect, this piece was not only a meditation on how we see each other and how machines see us, but also a double dance between human and machine.

Additionally, just like Jon Cates said:

They might be glitched and imperfect. But still they are functional or functioning in one way or another systematically.

Daito Manabe successfully combined minimal polygon and glitch art to demonstrate the virtual. Thus, audience could easily differentiate between the reality and illusion. By using drones, what was virtual can now exist as physical objects, this concept was that Manabe also wanted to deliver. In this 3 min performance, we just like wander along a virtual-to-reality chaotic space, sometimes being a touchable distance to the dancers, but sometimes living in the three-dimensional space. In Daito Manabe’s works, you hardly see any speech or words, he is convinced that music or number always express widely and precisely.

If I had wanted to express myself with words, I probably would have become a singer or a writer. The reason I chose music as the medium for expression was precisely because I didn’t want to use words. That is because I was attracted to the universality of things that aren’t words.

More information and details of it: The interview & Offical Website.

More Daito Manabe’s works with drones, dancers and lights:

Final Research Hyperessay: Artist Selection

Manabe Daito (まなべだいと)

He is a Tokyo-based media artist and programmer, and launched Rhizomatiks in 2006. His end goal is not simply rich, high-definition realism by recognizing and recombining these familiar elemental building blocks. Rather, his practice is informed by careful observation to discover and elucidate the essential potentialities inherent to the human body, data, programming, computers, and other phenomena, thus probing the interrelationships and boundaries delineating the analog and digital, real and virtual.

As the Japanese art critic Fumihiko Sumitomo described:

“visiting a western museum would make you believe, whether you are an artist or a mere observer, that art did not root in Japan. But it would be more accurate to say that we identify art as an autonomous genre which was imported from the West and that, starting from this premise, a sort of dualism has manifested itself in our culture.”

We know that art should be no geographical boundaries and language difference. As we hear about art, the first image in our mind always is western fine art. In this generation of global and interdisciplinary, we should take more attraction on eastern culture and possibility. Thus, with very special aesthetic and art sense, Japan should be a good option to do the study further on new media art. Manabe Daito is one of the representative person for japanese art. If the studied we have discussed presented the beginning of new art media, I think the final hyperessay what I can do is to discuss about our future.

Symposium Hyperessay- An Unfinished Communications Revolution

The symposium which I participated was the first and the last, and Annie Abrahams and Jon Cates, they all demonstrated a performance and talked about their own piece, webcam interaction and glitch art. As a third-space audience, it was a very interesting experience and some of audience talked about online chat culture as well (will be discussed later). Even, the online chat was also a part of the performance during this third-days symposium.

Day1. Annie Abrahams

As Annie Abrahams described, the one of reason why she always uses the Internet as a medium for her performance is to “study human behaviour without interfering in it.” In the round table discussion, she emphasized that ”It’s an unknown trading, you are not in the same space and don’t know each other. Between the machine and people, you can make something happen, and everything could be possible”. In particular, this time the performance was a live steam. Unlike the other videos which we can fast forward or go back anytime, as third-space audience, everything we are watching is real and bare. Unpredictable but beautiful. Even under the same situation, each participant will demonstrate in various ways because of the limited environment or different physical status. But still, it showed that the effort of a group of people solving a problem collectively.

Interestingly, I think online chat room could be also a kind of unknown trading, and we were all participating. If the purpose of chat room is to have a general consensus, even just a listener, you can still obtain new information through other’s discussion. Just like Annie said,

“We are alone together and we form meaningful and deeply human connections through networked interaction and performance.”

Audience are not in the same space, don’t know each other and unable to expect what other people will do, but eventually everyone will collaborate together.

Moreover, focused on the symposium theme – An Unfinished Communications Revolution, Annie Abrahams further explained the more possibilities of this piece from her aspect, such as using telematic performance to think about questioning geopolitical barriers or political statements. A multiple voice is a beautiful way to put it and she also tried to use some phrases referencing the issues on it. Concerning differences of languages, political experiences, technologies and cultures is very challenging. In my opinion, perhaps she has answered that “do we come close to achieving the promise of the communications revolution in a complicated world with global, political and technological inequalities”. Possible but not finished yet.

Day3. Jon Cates

Day3 symposium consisted of three main performances, young girls of XXXtraPrincess, #exsanguination and Shawne Michaelain Holloway’s Chamber Series. Different from BOLD3RRR, the previous work I studied, the display and screen of three performances all were quite completed and did not have any glitch. Conversely, the sound became more fragmented, muffled and non-linear. Because of the technical problem with latency, even the audience did not know which part of glitch were arranged and which part were not, such as sounds check or screen adjustment. This uncertain factors made the scenario more realistic, and the objection would be perhaps more profound to be in the performance space.

In the piece of young girls of XXXtraPrincess, there were two girl who looked at their phone screen and took selfie with SnapChat Lens and memes. With the set-up of the camera so you see the avatar and the person. It has a sci-fi feeling and sort of advance guard. As the result, audience can freely move among the phone screen, two performers and the whole environment.

a process of mourning and cleansing with leeches being applied to the performer’s body

In the round table discussion, the majority of people were more curious about the story and meaning of the performances, and glitch art did not get too much audience’s attraction. Perhaps the chat room offers audience alternative space beyond perfection. Like the discussion of the difference between local people and online audience, on the third-space, there is no geographical boundaries, people will tend to active and conversational. However, online audience could not see at times what was occurring whereas in the same we would able to – different qualitatively. The network almost seems an afterthought to some extent.

Talked about the symposium theme, dirty new media artist, Jon Cates, always enjoys these imperfections, errors and the aberrations. The unfinished undoubtedly is a part of glitch art, and igaies may present well. To summarize, I think the two artists, Annie Abrahams and Jon Cates, they all expressed what the unfinished communications from their piece. Abundant and worth to thinking about.

Research Critique: Jon Cates and BOLD3RRR

“???” was my initial impression when I first watched BOLD3RRR as I did not understand the concept that Jon Cates was trying to portray. After reading Randall Packer’s interview with him, I finally realized this glitch artist and had a new aspect of “dirty new media”.

BOLD3RRR consisted of a frontal view of him in full screen but slightly fuzzy and blurry, a text overlaying programs on screen and a glitchy scape with the strong buzzing. The content seems to be cluttered and all over the place, but there was still some sort of flow. There seems to be a narrative but it is very much non-linear. This narrative way lets me recall “Montage”. These sources seem fragmented, repeated and discordant, but they are connected to one another as assemblages or generated a new meaning. Like Jon Cates mentioned that, glitches are functional or functioning in one way or another systematically, Bold3RRR is a performance art with it as the main focus.

They might be glitched, and they might be imperfect and noisy, and that might be what attracts us or me to those systems. But still they are functional or functioning in one way or another systematically.

When I reviewed this piece again, I especially enjoyed the moment at 6:15-6:20. The screen showed that Jon Cates was using the software normally, but screen suddenly fasted forward with the flashing text in the following 5 seconds. The scene brought me a strong sense of disgusting that seems like someone hacks into your computer and you cannot able to control by your own. Glitch was happened when we have imperfections in the program and it produced results that were unexpected by programmer. While there are many people who would prevent glitch as much as possible, Jon Cates embraced the parts that these imperfections occurs and explored into these glitches which generated unpredictable artwork.

Besides, I found an interview with Jon Cates regarding glitch art and dirty new media. It questioned that glitch aesthetics of thinking could be applied to another aspect in real life that:

It should be extended to considerations about other aspects of our society beyond art, in which we ignore those who don’t fit into our social ideals of perfection and worthiness.

Personally, I think he provided a new reflection for people to encounter those glitches that we always wanted to get rid. Instead, we should enjoy these imperfections, errors and the aberrations. The more you destroy it, the more beautiful it gets. The one way to deal with this problem is embracing them, just like how Jon Cates took advantage of this opportunity to make art.

Actually, glitching can be easily found in variety of forms in real life, including the computer desktop which we use everyday. In Windows XP. As the lag screen render fail causes with the loads of error dialogs, user can drag the window around and it would duplicate itself over and over. Then, you will get a new glitch create space, like the below image.

The Glitch gives you a creative space when window crashed.

Research Critique: Telematic Dreaming (Paul Sermon, 1992)

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 how people interact and communicate with each other in the absence of physical contact, like Paul Sermon indicated in his essay wrote in 2000:

Telematic Dreaming, with its connotations of intimacy and dream states, extends telepresence beyond the screen to spatialize the site of interaction. The work explores presence, absence and the psychology of human interaction within technologically mediated communications.

In most and normal conditions, people unconsciously keep a certain distance with stranger. The interaction also remains polite and passive. However, such as the below image showed, most of participant closely interacted with each other like a couple. In the book, Welcome to Electronic Café International, Galloway and Rabinowitz also mentioned that:

Virtual space diminishes our fears of interaction. The absence of the threat of physical harm makes people braver.

The absence of face-to-face contact made a new possibility of interaction for participant and art performance. Moreover, Paul Sermon gave it an interesting metaphor, silent movie. As soon users can communicate by speech, they will resort to that means of communication alone – as speech is a dominant form of communication between complete strangers. Without speech the two users have to discover new ways in which they can interact.

Participant closely interact with each other.

Additionally, I think this artwork also pointed out a related issue, long-distance interaction. In the essay, Galloway and Rabinowitz also mentioned that their idea is to create an electronic, multimedia composite-image space which people separated by distance, language, values and culture could come together to collaborate. The concept of Telecmatic Dreaming, from long distance to zero distance, may potentially influence the further interaction design. It lets me recall that few months ago, Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau hosted an event titled “New York Times Square & Taipei – Join Hearts”. In this campaign, New Yorkers and Taiwanese nationals interacted with each other by simultaneously creating heart-shaped hand gestures, which were broadcast through live stream on billboards in Times Square and Taipei. Similarity, stranger can interact with each other without no geographic boundaries.

New Yorkers and Taiwanese nationals interacted with each other by simultaneously creating heart-shaped hand gestures

Research Critique: Ant Farm and Cadillac Ranch (1974)

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 introspection.”

Ant Farm was also always utopian, ironic and tongue-in-cheek. Their projects revealed the relationships between environmental degradation and mass industry, questioned the role of mass media and consumerism and demonstrated the use of advanced technologies with playful projects. A cultural historian, Rebecca Solnit mentioned that “The group is both part of the subculture and part of the mainstream.”. Moreover, Michael Sorkin, in his essay, “Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Cars, Dolphins, and Architecture,” also described Ant Farm’s architectural contribution in a cultural context that includes the French Surrealists and American car culture, such as the below case which remains an icon of American culture – Cadillac Ranch.

Cadillac Ranch

This project was created in 1974 in Texas. They buried 10 Cadillacs, vintage 1948 to 1963, in a field off Route 66 in Amarillo. In the heyday of pop-art and counterculture, this “Stonehenge for America” was trying to create a group that could express their non-orthodox views on architecture, design and media. Exactly, This project brought a marked influence, as Michels said in 1994 in Los Angeles Times, “It took from being an obscure, avant-garde artwork to being an American icon”. Before this artwork, no one considered that American automobile could be a symbol – a ironic celebration of the “grotesque and wonderful” tail-fin as the ultimate expression of wasteful design in American culture.*

*quoted from: here

The Cadillacs were buried in sequence from the oldest, 1949, to the newest, 1964. There are 10, each car representing the latest version of the famous Cadillac tail fin.

When Cadillac Ranch was widely covered on mass communication to draw visitors from around the world, Lewallen observed that, it is not surprising, since the audience for the actual event was largely limited to the press, this phenomenon perfectly exemplified Ant Farm’s

“remarkable ability to exploit the very medium they opposed.”
–M. Lewallen and Steve Seid, Ant Farm 1968-1978, University of California Press, 2004, p. 2

In a letter to Stanley Marsh 3, one of funders of Cadillac Ranch, signed “Rip-Off Artists” in their typically jocular manner, they request money to produce “trash souvenirs”. Ant Farm just were and are among the preeminent comedians of architectural culture.

This work were painted several times in a variety of colors and shades of grey. The pink period was one of the most popular, taken in 1990.

Additionally, I very like the one of discussion of Cadillac Ranch by Melissa E. Feldman in his essay, Unearthing Ant Farm:

This work stands as a symbolic annihilation of America’s two most precious and insidious commodities, the TV and the car, and by extension, an attack on corporate control of wealth and mass-media control of information.

Through this “Stonehenge for America”, in the first level, Ant Farm tried to deliver American automobile can also be a symbol of local. Afterwards, viewers may commence to reflect the conflict between consumerism and environmentalism. The final level, while the artwork was widely covered by press, it should be reviewed the issue of mass-media control simultaneously.

Research Critique: Immersion and Sensorama

The Sensorama is known as the earliest concept of immersive technology. It was invented by Morton Heilig who was touted as the father of virtual reality device in 1957 and patented in 1962 . It was a head-mounted display that played 3D film accompanied by sound, moving air, and aromas to create a virtual sensory environment. The user would sit on a rotating chair which enabled them to face this screen, and be shown the stereoscopic images which gave the illusion of depth and the ability to view something from different angles.

Morton Heilig using his Sensorama machine in 1984.

The Concept of Immersion

Simply, immersion can refer to “a perception of being physically in a non-physical environment”. While Morton Heilig was inspired by short-lived curiosities like 3D movies and Cinerama , he believed that:

“by expanding cinema to involve not only sight and sound, but also taste, touch, and smell, the traditional fourth wall of film and theater would dissolve, transporting the audience into a habitable, virtual world.”

In this “experience theater”, user is able to feel of being inside and interact with his environment in meaningful ways. And the combination of a sense of immersion and interactivity can be also called “telepresence“.

The First Virtual Reality Device (?)

Sensorama widely was considered the pioneer of VR technology. However, when I deeply studied, there are other critiques indicated that The Sword of Damocles should be the priority. They claimed that The Sword of Democles is more in-line with what we would consider modern VR, and importantly unlike the Sensorama, it is computerized. VR usually was defined as:

“A computer-generated scenario that simulates a realistic experience.”

But, from the patent publication of Sensorama, We can clearly find that the main structure was supported by non-computerized components.

“A visual image projection is supported by the housing, and an optical means is included to direct images from the projection means to the hood. In addition to the above, means is provided to direct a breeze toward this hood, and at least one odor-sense stimulating substance is positioned to be releasable into the breeze in response to a signal from a suitable coordinating means.” – Patent Claim

“Sensorama is the first VR device” still need to be considered and discussed further. From the modern perspective, The Sword of Damocles is closer to the prototype of VR whether the concept or structure. In my opinion, Sensorama may be defined the first idea of immersion experience, and the first VR device should be The Sword of Damocles. After all, immersion can be non-computerized.

Which one is the first virtual reality device? Sensorama or The Sword 0f Damocles

Selling The Future

Last but not least, This example is more unique than the previous works which discussing on the class. Heilig found commercial potential from this concept. In his patent publication, he was mentioned that in 50’s:

“There are increasing demands today for ways and means to teach and train individuals without actually subjecting the individuals to possible hazards of particular situations.”

Apparently, he successfully predicted the future, scores of companies use VR as a way to showcase their products and experiences nowadays. But in his generation, corporations weren’t ready, and this work failed to secure sufficient investment and sales. From the contemporary viewpoint, Sensorama exactly has a huge benefit and the direction of development is as he expected either. This failure story just like narrates that true genius is seldom recognized until it’s too late.

like Alex Lambert, Creative Director of a immersive experiences company, frequently references the case of Sensorama device. “It’s amazing that someone did this with the rudimentary technology of the 1960s. That’s some serious ambition!”

Research Critique: Hypermedia and Aspen Movie Map

Aspen Movie Map was created by Michael Naimark together with Peter Clay and Bob Mohlin the late 1970’s. It was a groundbreaking interactive virtual tour of the real world city of Aspen, Colorado. In this simulated environment, users can navigate the streets, go inside selected buildings, or even change the seasons between fall and winter. After researching, I think that this art work is notable for the two following reasons:

1. an early and classic example of hypermedia system.
2. could be seen as the origin of Google Street View.

Today, when people are wandering through Google Map’s street view, they may never know this idea has existed more than 40 years.

What is hypermedia?

According to “As we may think“, wrote by Vannevar Bush in 1945:

A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

However, when I deeply found more articles, the term “non-linear” is often used when defining hypertext and hypermedia. I think this term should be done more comparisons and clarification for me and readers.

Traditional linear media vs Non-linear hypermedia.

Simply, novel and encyclopedia can clearly explain what the difference between “linear media” and “non-linear hypermedia” is:

Linear media: the information is written to or read from the medium in a given order, such as novel is intended to be read from beginning to end, and is therefore a linear medium. It may be written in the same way, but would not necessarily need to be, to be considered a linear medium.

Non-linear hypermedia: Non-linear medium is not necessary for the articles to be accessed (or written) in any particular order, like encyclopedia. Linear medium has a set path of how to get from a point to another point, whereas non-linear mediums do not.

Moreover, I also did a diagram to compare the difference between multimedia and hypermedia. Hypermedia usually refers to “link media” or “interactive media” and could be a software that connects elements(video, plain text or hyperlink) of a computer system, like the following example, Aspen Movie Map.

The first hypermedia system: Aspen Movie Map

A landmark hypermedia installation which allowed visitors to interactively explore and navigate the roads in a small town in Colorado. It was made through the world’s first laserdisc player which had been intended for the storage and playback of large movies. The below photos showing the automobile rigs used to create panoramas of the streets, then and now. (Aspen Movie Map & Google Street View)

Aspen Movie Map and Google Street View — It can find the main idea doesn’t change a lot after 40 years

This research what I learned is that, indeed, I never thought Google Street View can represent hypermedia. Users can wander visually the streets through the non-linear but linked medium of information. This is a familiar and classic example for modern people. Additionally, like the first concept of Dyanbook was designed for children, Naimark may never know that his art work can be developed a kind of navigation system for modern people.