Category: Research

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The Big Kiss, Annie Abrahams, 2008

Annie Abrahams was born  in the Netherlands in 1954 and has lived in France since 1985. She gained a Doctorate in biology and a graduate in fine arts. She is a performance artist based on internet, networked platform. She explores the possibilities of communication and relationships mediated by machine. She creates the networked performances collaborating and communicating with other artists at a distance using the webcam interface. 

The Big Kiss

The Big Kiss is a performance installation present in 10th October 2008, from 7:00 to 10:00 pm in Brooklyn, New York. Annie Abrahams performed using the webcam network to meet and kiss on the divided screen.

“What’s contact in a machine mediated world? What’s the power of the image? How does it feel to kiss without touching? Does the act change because we see it? What does it mean to construct an image with your tongue? And is there still desire? Does the act provoke it? What’s contact in a machine mediated world?”

-Annie Abrahams, The Big Kiss, http://www.bram.org/toucher/TBK.html

Communication and Intimacy mediated by machine

She experiments human behavior in digital era. We communicate with others virtually and gain a physical safety. We put our bodies in our room, make a relationship or escape from it easily with on and off button. In this era, Could we communicate and make a intimate relationship without seeing each other? What kind of communication is it? or what kind of intimacy is it? Could we replace the word “relationship” with the word “network”?

We never reach out to complete communication both in physical and virtual world. There is alway misunderstanding, misreading and disconnection which makes isolation and loneliness. The thing is that we always fail to communicate correctly. With all this technological developments, though, communication was fated to fail. In my opinion, this misunderstanding and disconnection create chaos. And chaos is tool for new possibility. Annie Abrahams accepts this chaos and make it performance art. By doing so, she suggests a different form of intimacy that is in between loneliness and togetherness just like what human behave behind the on-off machine.

“The projects situate a condition of lonely togetherness, of life constructing a commonality, of being together and sharing this condition of co-responsibility, of scripted auto-organisation.”

-A question of control?, Trapped to Reveal-On webcam mediated communication and collaboration, Annie Abrahams.

“My thinking is more about communication: about, on the one hand, the desire of being close with someone and, on the other, the necessity of restricting one’s openness, of closing oneself, of retreating from intimacy.”

-Annie Abrahams, Allergic to Utoias interviewed by Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Digicult

“We reveal a big spectacle of loneliness… of misunderstanding, poetic situations conditioned or not, failed attempts, frustrated desires… what I call a connected world finally disconnected!…”

Nicolas Frespech participating artist, Reactions Experiences, Trapped to Reveal-On webcam mediated communication and collaboration, Annie Abrahams.

The “Big” Kiss

I guess that “big” means the size of territory that this networked kiss could embrace compared to physical kiss. Kissing through the webcam at a distance embraces the distance between participants and also makes possible viewers engage in The Big Kiss with their eyes.

The Big Kiss, 20-21 June, 2009, Live Internet Broadcast Performance by Annie Abrahams (Ljubljana), http://www.bram.org/toucher/tbk-00.jpg
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Telematic Dreaming, Paul Sermon, 1992

Telematic Dreaming, Paul Sermon, 1992, http://www.pauwaelder.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/extimitat_60-620×412.jpg

Telematic dreaming is interactive installation by Paul Sermon. In this work, people can communicate with the projected  image of other people who are in separate place. Audiences and performers make collaborative movement through the video screen and projector. They pay a lot of attention to synchronize their movement and to communicate correctly like they could touch each other. It is clear that the projected image is not a real and just a flat, light image. Even though there is nothing physically, people give some space to image. We all know that the image on the bed is not a real person, but still people act like an image is a real. What makes it real?

In my opinion, ‘real’ is an empty image. If some clues satisfy the sense of real to some extent, people could make a real in their own way. In short, ‘real’ is replaceable. Therefore it is an empty image that we could fill it with temporary reality. 

We will have to accommodate notions of uncertainty, chaos, autopoiesis and contingency to a view of the world in which the observer and observed, creator and viewer are inextricably linked in the process of making reality – all our many separate realities interacting, colliding, reforming, and resonating within the telematic noosphere of the planet.

-Roy Ascott, “Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace,” 1991, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality

In this perspective, Telematic Dreaming captures the way we perceive something as a real. It suggests participators to collaborate with others to make a reality using their body. By doing so, they can connect and communicate with others who are at a distance, as they really meet face to face.

Telematic art reminds me of a television live program that was produced in 1983 in South Korea. It was the search campaigns for families separated by Korean war. This program lasted total 138days, from 22:15 pm, June 30 to 4:00 am, November 14 in 1983. The total live broadcasting time was 453hours 45minutes. Through this program, 100,952 application were submitted, 53,536 stories were introduced and 10,189 separated families were reunited. This broadcasting program triggered the official exchange visits of separated families from North Korea and South Korea. This event was the representative example that shows the social impact and possibility of telematics and television in South Korea. 

KBS, 이산가족을 찾습니다.(Finding dispersed families),http://www.sisaone.kr/news/photo/201510/6242_6658_1724.JPG

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Ant Farm, Media Burn(1975-2003)

Ant farm, architects collective, set the ultimate media event called Media Burn  in 4 July 1975. They made the poster to invite people to parking lot of Cow Palace where the event was held near San Francisco. They made press release to have local news come to cover it. More than 300 people attended the event to see “Media Burn”. They sold their posters and t-shirts. The documenting crews interviewed people who attended the event. Before the artist dummies started, the Artist-president walked on the stage and addressed about the American life of media.

”Who can deny we are a nation addicted to television and the constant flow of media…..Now I ask you, my fellow Americans, haven’t you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen?’’

The Art-President introduced artist dummies. Two artist dummies slided into the “Phantom Dream Car”made with 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz and crashed into the burning wall of televisions. After the crash, they got out of the car and sat on the backseat of driving car to wave their hands to audiences, like a hero.

Ant Farm, Media Burn, screenshot from Ant Farm – Media Burn – West Coast Video Art – MOCAtv
https://youtu.be/FXY6ocvaZyE

This work shows the power of images that the two icons of 1960s America burned and crashed.  Remodeled Cadillac was literally “phantom” that was representative of the American culture.

A broadcaster covered the event on the news and ended with a question about the event, “Get it?” and a news anchor said “I don’t think I want to get it.” It was exactly what the artist-president anticipated in his speech. He said “the world may never understand what was done here today but the image created here shall never be forgotten.”

Ant Farm made the whole event, not just a crashing image. They set all the stages, narratives and order of the event. It was just like a political event that we can see on a broadcast. I think that a series of narratives (including inviting local news, artist-president’s speech, and introducing artist dummies etc.) was the process to persuade people to immerse in the Media Burn. They made people believe this event seriously as a real, not a funny, joking black comedy show. If the cadillac had just crashed on the burning television sets, it couldn’t have made this powerful impact. People might have said “So what?”. But through the series of  narratives, Ant Farm made it as a real. And the image with the whole process  made a huge influence.

“It was a project that was about creating one image, just this image that you see here. But,… first imagined 1973 and It took two and a half of years to realize this. In the course of that period of time, it became not just a photo shoot to create this image , but became a public performance before live audience…we wanted to have local news come out to cover it as if it was a real. And we had our own video crews there. And it became a expanding kind of project that had all this different components….”

-Chip Lord live from the NMC Media Lounge at the College Art Association conference

“The group well understood that the object is nothing without its performative aura.”

-Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Cars, Dolphins, and Architexture, Michael Sorkin

In my opinion, this event was captured the ambivalent emotion to the new technology at that time. In 1960s, it was the period when the technology-based  products became common in daily life that we take for granted these days. People felt anxiety of different way of life, enjoying television show at the same time. “Media Burn” is a performative artwork that catch that anxiety and visualize it hilariously.

 

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Videoplace, Myron Krueger: from passive viewer to active user

 

Myron Krueger, Videoplace, 1970

Videoplace had developed by Myron Krueger from 1970s to 1980s. (According to wikipedia, Videoplace was a name of artificial reality laboratory.) The system of Videoplace works using projector, video cameras, hardware and screen to interpret the movement of users into images on the screen. Users can control the characters or draw lines to make an image on the screen. And users can also communicate and interact with another users in separate rooms through the silhouette on the screen. There are over 50 compositions and interactions of videoplace.

 

The movement of users transferred to graphic interface such as point(pixel, line, plane(silhouette), and color. By moving their full body, audiences participate in the work actively and produce images. It means that the role of audience changed from passive viewers who are just sitting and touching to active users who are using their whole body to produce images. Audiences become producers who create images by using interactive system that was developed by scientists and artists. In this work, audience can experience and  involve in an “artificial reality”.

In the essay written by Scott Fisher, I found the explanation that pointed out the change of the viewer’s role.

“A key feature of these display systems (and of more expensive simulation systems) is that the viewer’s movements are non-programmed; that is, they are free to choose their own path through available information rather than remain restricted to passively watching a ‘guided-tour’.”

–Scott Fisher, “Virtual Environments” 1989, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality

Videoplace reminded me of 3D virtual drawing tool. Now we can draw 3 dimensional drawing in the space. The expansion from 2D plane on the computer screen to 3D void in the real space changes people’s experience and sense in both virtual reality and physical world.

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Deep Contact, Duration Infinite

Deep Contact, 1984, interactive videodisk installation, duration infinite, video stills, http://www.lynnhershman.com/project/interactivity/

Deep Contact was the human-computer interactive artwork made by Lynn Hershman Leeson in 1989. There was a guide named Marion on the screen and the work asked people to touch any part of her body to play the work. An experience that it gave to audience depended on which body part was touched. They could make a “virtual connections” with the screen images by  touching it. There were “a complex web of episodes” and it was triggered by audience.

There are two elements related to the essays. First, depending on which part was touched, it triggered “linking” to episode that was organized by the artist. Second, audience was required to touch any part of the Marion’s body to start the artwork. In other words, Deep Contact needs human-computer interaction to produce experience and meaning as the artwork.

In the essay by Vannevar Bush, the author introduces a device named “memex”(memory extender) that is a future device to store and manipulate the information and knowledge. And he suggests the system to operate this storage of knowledge that is resembled with the way the human think.

“The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain.”

-Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945

 

Original illustration of the Memex from the Life reprint of “As We May Think”, http://history-computer.com/Internet/images/memex.jpg

In the essay “Personal Dynamic Media”, the author focused on the possibility of human-computer interaction as “the communication and manipulation of knowledge” with many examples of the systems programmed by ordinary people using the Dynabook.

This new “metamedium” is active—it can respond to queries and experiments—so that the messages may involve the learner in a two-way conversation.

– Personal Dynamic Media, Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, 1977

Dynabook, http://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Personal/Dynabook.html

When I first saw the artwork “Deep Contact” on the official website of Lynn Hershman, the description of the duration captured my eyes.

“Duration Infinite”

It looks like a metaphor about the contemporary multimedia life. With the notion of “Hyperlink”, we never stop clicking contents. Our real body is forgotten and expanded into the screen where is never-ending, non-sequential linking of information , knowledge, events and joy. 

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The Intervention Point: John Cage, Variations V

John Cage, Variations V, http://nobleeducator.com/wp-content/uploads/Variations_V.jpg

“Variations V” was an audio-visual performance. Billy Klüver set up a sound system of photocells, reacting to the movements of the dancers. When the dancers cut the light beams with their movements, and the sounds were controlled. And on the background of the stage, film footage by Stan Vanderbeek and television images by Nam Jum Paik were projected.

John Cage created the system of interactivity that combined the movements with sounds, and visual images through movements(messages). In his essay “Cybernetics in History”, Norbert Wiener explained “entropy” . As communicating and interpreting information through messages, there would be “degrading of the organized” and “destroying the meaningful”. 

I think the entropy made a new interactive experience in this performance. The point where the information was destroyed was the gap where the audiences could intervene in the artworks and make their own experience. I think there were two ways of intervention in his performance; One was between the elements of the performance,  dance, sounds, and visual images. Another was between the whole performance and audiences.

“ In control and communication we are always fighting nature’s tendency to degrade the organized and to destroy the meaningful; the tendency, as Gibbs has shown us, for entropy to increase”

“Messages are themselves a form of pattern and organization. Indeed, it is possible to treat sets of messages as having an entropy like sets of states of the external world. ”

-“Cybernetics in History”, Norbert Wiener

John Cage, Variations V, 1965, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqXM-EU1ncw

John Cage’s performance created an interactive experience. The performance demanded audiences to organize their own experience with the elements of the performance. The meaning of the performance depended on audiences, as Roy Ascott mentioned in his essay “Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetics Vision”

“While the general context of the art-experience is set by the artist, its evolution in any specific sense is unpredictable and dependent on the total involvement of the spectator.”

“He will continue, instead, to provide a matrix for ideas and feelings from which the participants in his work may construct for themselves new experiences and unfamiliar patterns of behavior.”

-“Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetics Vision”, Roy Ascott

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Imagine the art of the future, mutimedia

Even before analyzing the word or the history of “multimedia”, I have pre-conception. Whenever I saw the multimedia or interactive art exhibited in Seoul, there were always some problems. The works supposed to move were stopped because of the safety problem or sometimes even the artists just left them because they couldn’t fix it during the exhibition. And if the works were moving, the movements were too tough, simple and indelicate so it didn’t make any impression. In my experience, the words ‘interactive, technology, multimedia (art)” mean dull, broken down often, and stopped. So after reading this essay, I realized that I got totally different experience and approaches where the multimedia started.

In this essay, the author focused on Richard Wagner‘s  “Total Artwork”. He tried to make a comprehensive integration of the arts, totalizing effect of music drama. And John Cage was mentioned as the key performance artist to influence the next generation artists such as Allan Kaprow, Dick Higgins and Nam June Paik.

Richard Wagner, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner

The most important scientist among the artists was Billy Klüver who “conceived the notion of equal collaboration between artist and engineer.” He made a lot of artworks with artists and founded E.A.T (Experiments in Art and Technology) to connect artists and engineers to create new works.

Billy Klüver, http://dada.compart-bremen.de/item/agent/369

I thought that the notion of “interactivity, integration, multimedia” could expand to the way more than two elements/media/people can connect and communicate with each other. It’s not only about the mechanical art using technology, but also about the relationships between artists and audiences, artists and scientists in a non-hierarchical structure. 

After reading the essay, I thought about “the Death of the Author” written by Roland Barthes. In his essay, he argues that writing and author are unrelated and the interpretation of the writing is only up to viewer.  After blurring the boundaries between artists and audiences, and artworks and viewers, what will remain? Maybe we don’t need the words “artist”, and “audience” because there’s no border anymore. We can call just “user” or “maker” of the system. Let’s imagine the future of the art, could it be “prosumer“?

The death of the author, https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-barthes-4/