Hyperessay Concept: Phantom of the Machine

Phantom of the Machine: The Ghost in the Machine

Concept

Phantom of the Machine is an exploration of human’s reception to intelligence of a machine. It is contrived in experimental spirit to study the interactivity between non-human being and object. This is done through playful public intervention, inspiring experiences with an emotional machine. Where the intelligence is of human, there is, however, negation of noticeable physical presence. This installation aims to disrupt he audience everyday interaction involving computers.

Prior Art

Since the culmination of Project Virtual Awkwardness last left of in OSS, the investigation of spaces was running along the discourse of the third space. Whereas the humans who are governed by the fear of God ties in with physical death, the being whose fear of social media challenges the existential notion of intellectual engagement in space-time continuum ranging from the real, virtual to the third space.

The artist’s fear of social media would render the physicality of a human body irrelevant and would live as close as to minimally on consciousness. This implies that the object would have to live on collaborative interaction between itself and its environment. For the artist, that stream-of-consciousness would be the only way to indicate her presence. Was silence then relevant How could silence be perceived? The mind and its data visualised in textual form and silence as glitch?

In Internet Art & Culture, we have dealt with concepts such as the collective artwork, data visualisation, glitch aesthetics and more. At the end of this experiment, more would be elaborated as we look into our findings.

Objectual Consciousness

In 1965, Amerian artist associated with Minimalism, Donald Judd, wrote one of the most significant texts of the movement known as “Specific Objects”. Judd emphasises the physical, phenomenological experience of objects rather than representing any metaphysical or metaphoric.

Objectual consciousness, as a term would help unravel Phantom of the Machine’s idea of a concrete with its consciousness emancipating in a stream. Additionally, a layer of performance filmed the box and to complicate matter, interactivity is involved in the experience.

Judd believed that art should not represent anything, that it should unequivocally stand on its own and simply exist. Contextually speaking, it was ousting painting’s representation of space and abandoning plinth of a sculpture. Strict rules are set against illusion and falsity.

In Phantom of the Machine, an objectual consciouness is alchemised with a machine installed in plexiglas. The evaluation of its consciousness in performance and interactivity would be ensued in the Project Hyperessay Role of Viewer, we determine the role of artist and its viewer, how the interaction would be, and the rituals involved.

Jennicam: Not Safe for Work

Jennifer Ringley, Jennicam, (1997)

My name is Jennifer Ringley, and I am not an actor or dancer or entertainer. I am a computer geek… I don’t sing or dance or do tricks (okay, sometimes I do) but not very well and solely for my own amusement, not yours).

“This will replace television,” said David Letterman.

With Jennicam, the ignition of reality television sparks controversial discussions. In view of voyeurism in its celebration, Hal Niedzviecki writes that “the Peep celebrity is indicative of just how entranced we are by the media machine’s ability to create the star-celebrity; we are drawn to the person-product who seems to fit so effortlessly into a society organised around the principle that people can and should be reduced to hits, ratings, views, box office gross.” A fan-mail for Jennifer Ringley states that his observation Ringley staying home on a Friday night comforts him. This judgement validates with her popularity speared from Jennicam’s 100 million hits a week.

Jennicam and NSFW

David Letterman added, “… They are lonely and desperate.”

Freeing what we watched redefines our culture and as a result justifies our inherent voyeuristic desires on certain level. Jennifer Ringley is an attractive young blonde woman that burns the heart of straight men and charges raging hormones. While an incentive like this is hard to ignore, the larger part of our collective emptiness envelopes us in the world of Jennifer Ringly, bordering between the real and virtual in Jennicam. The “third space” (a popular term coined by Randall Packer) explores limitless possibilities in cyborgian engagement.

Thank you, jenni.

Jennifer Ringley plays with her boobs.

Jennifer Ringley seduces with her boobs.

Jennifer Ringley and her ass grabbed.

Jennifer Ringley shows one nipple.

Jennifer Ringley masturbating while reading a book.

Many years after Jennicam, the reminiscence remains to be most upworthy in hits features nudity and sexual nuances that keeps discussions lingering. Albeit not the most academic, there is value in pioneering everyday live cam. Jennifer Ringley may have recede into sea of data, but she will always remain as a key icon for what she does and whom are inspired.

Read Jennicam and Project Virtual Awkwardness for first installment.

“… I’d always had a desire to sneak into a girl’s apartment and watch her through the night. I had the idea that while I was doing this I’d see something which I’d later realize was the clue to a mystery. I think people are fascinated by that, by being able to see into a world they couldn’t visit. That’s the fantastic thing about cinema, everybody can be a voyeur. Voyeurism is a bit like watching television – go one step further and you want to start looking in on things that are really happening.”

– David Lynch

The Pirate Cinema: The Free Cinema

Nicholas Maigret, The Pirate Cinema, (2012)

In the context of omnipresent telecommunications surveillance, “The Pirate Cinema” reveals the hidden activity and geography of Peer-to-Peer file sharing. The project is presented as a monitoring room, which shows Peer-to-Peer transfers happening in real time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol. The installation produces an arbitrary cut-up of the files currently being exchanged. User IP addresses and countries are displayed on each cut, depicting the global topology of content consumption and dissemination.

Nicholas Maigret’s presentation to show the world through technology and language of our time, as he explained to has existed through historical avant-gardes, aligns with Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye manifesto (1923):

I, a machine, am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see. […]

I free myself for today and forever from human immobility.

This is I , the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements,

recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations.

Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be.

My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world.

Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you.

The erection of TPC (The Pirate Cinema), could be explained at large with Lisa Jevbratt’s opening to Coding the Infome: Writing Abstract Reality where she is quoted “to write code is to create reality.” In TPC, physicality of generative visual material in its dimensionality establishes non-linear space-time continuum; “it is similar to the act of making a sculpture or designing and sewing clothes – to start with a material and feel how it folds and falls and cut out two dimensional surfaces that turn into three dimensional shapes by sawing them together in specific way.” Truly, a “global village” of internet’s age of independence is beautifully woven.

At first glance, the clashes of visual imageries identifiably of pop icons and colossal NSFW feeds the viewer overwhelms yet ironically satisfy the short attention span of modern digital natives. Albeit arbitrary in the orchestration of audio-visual channels, the transitory aesthetics of failure in glitch harmonise the bytes of familiarity, evolving into resonance of our interwoven identity our Internet contemporaries.

The curation of top 100 downloads could perhaps be most illustrative of popular choices then polling and voting systems helmed by any human host and the authenticity of an open source network most genuinely conveys human-to-human connection makes this work of art brilliant in demonstration. To recall and speak of the present cinema, is to speak of The Pirate Cinema. The cinematic language has to progress and it is of every concern of today’s cinematographers in frames from the traditionally calculated aspect ratio to explosive immersion of dome. In TPC’s live performance, demographical interests is further data mined and visualised in total honesty. Medium at large, TPC ironically brings audiences back into the cinematic experience a black cube. The extraction of focus without mobility of an Iphone screen reminds for the piracy of content, sacrificed was the past infrastructure, though not necessarily abhorred against. The new, is however, going back to the old for the newer, the endless cycle provides “the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes”, says McLhuan. We are certainly anxious.

For more information, check out it’s home site and array of visage at TPC’s photo stream.