About the Work and Artist

Telematics: the area of technology that deals with sending digital information over long distances using wireless forms of communication

The Third Space: The third space represents the fusion of the physical (first space) and the remote (second space) into a third space that can be inhabited by remote users simultaneously or asynchronously.

Telematic Dreaming

Telematic Dreaming is an artwork produced by Paul Sermon who works a lot with the Third Space with telematics. Noting that this work takes place in 1993, Paul Sermon truly breaks the definition of what is virtual and what is reality.

The work involves two beds 5000 kilometres apart. One bed is in the exhibition space and the other is inaccessible to the audience. Both beds are being recorded with a camera but only the image of Paul Sermon is being projected onto the exhibition’s bed. Here, both artist and the audience are allowed to interact, lie or sit or even touch. Audio is not used in this work in order to prevent the users to use their voice as means of communication.

Using something called ISDN and chroma keying the artist is able to project himself onto the bed.

Paul Sermon also works with other types of telematic settings like the dining table, shower room and the sofa and TV room.

Telematic Encounter

Telematic Vision

Body of Water

How it relates to The Third Space and Me

Firstly, I feel the that the setting of the third place, specifically in Telematic Dreaming, plays a significant role in how the audience feels. The bed, is an understood object across all ages and cultures. It is a symbol of security, comfort, intimacy, privacy, vulnerability.

When confronted with such a complex object, some people may feel afraid to commit to what might happen during the interaction. They are forced to break down their walls, and decide to become vulnerable to be able to experience an intimate connection. Once being able to reach such a level of intimate connection in a public context, they have truly and fully entered and immersed themselves in the third space.

Ironically, in the third space, people usually have avatars and use that to embody another persona. But in Telematic Dreaming, you are forced to be yourself, be “naked” and connect with someone else.

Secondly, this work speaks of the human need to be touched.

In 2009, a DePauw University psychologist, Matthew Hertenstein, demonstrated that we have an innate ability to decode emotions via touch alone. Participants communicated eight distinct emotions—anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness—with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent.

(https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201303/the-power-touch)

Whether we know it or not, touching forces us to be open to send the receiver emotions and to receive emotions. This form of communicating is direct, fast, and effective. It can affect a person psychologically in a good or bad way. In the third space of this artwork, such complex exchange of communications and feelings are able to take place.

Thirdly, in this artwork, we touch and feel the presence of another, with our eyes. Which is very interesting, because in my last point I said there was an exchange of communication through touching, but to begin with, touching does not actually exist in this artwork. It is amazing how the quickly human body adapts its senses when other senses are not being able to work in a situation.

In relation to me, my boyfriend and I have been calling every night for the past 3 years and “slept together”, I guess, in the third space. In my nightly third space, I experience his presence and touch through what I hear.