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 Big Kiss: Sensuality Beyond Physicality

Annie Abrahams, The Big Kiss, (2008)

Machine mediated kissing in a performance = drawing with your tongue = taking pleasure, while constructing an image = a way to be superaware of the other = never totally abandoning yourself = ???????? = not at all like real kissing, it’s better! This might be a female view point.

– Annie Abrahams

Check out 5 minute documentary:

Annie Abrahams creates situations where people reveal things of themselves they normally don’t show, being real and acting out of what is normally accepted, referring to it as an “intimate moment”. The idea is that in such a situation, people invest their thoughts and emotions while conferencing in the third space. In retrospection, it pricks to pick on their performance, in The Kiss, both performers self-consciously gestured a kiss. A kiss and its various cultural connotations deconstructed in the third space. Read more…

From Annie Abrahams’ “not at all like real kissing, it’s better!”, it suggests fear of bodily intimacy such that a mediated situation creates a simulation that human are perhaps more comfortable with from machine’s interface.

On the opportunistic point of view, it is an empowerment of the machine as an extension of our mere body. The sensuality of kissing has transcended beyond the physicality of which.

Fear is an emotion evoked by our instinctual senses that we may react in fight or flight. Women associate oral activities as emotional engagement, that prompts vulnerability. From being “superaware” of the dynamics behind the screen and bearing an overview of oneself with another through super-flat, perhaps then, an inspiration of safety be it physical or emotional propagates thrill and immersive voyeurism.

Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

When observed alone in physical space, an observer might decide to feel awkward for the participant, when in fact such engagement is so intimate to those involved. To kiss as a gesture is differentiated in implications. Where in The Big Kiss with the hint of intimacy in machine learning, intimacy pushes beyond physical and emotional, but to cognitive and experiential.

In men’s ideation of sexual fantasies and desires, physical fixation is where the difference lies in as compared to women. Annie Abrahams is might be right after all that it might be of preference to females in virtual act of intimacy.

Touch is the space of the gap, not the connection. (Source)