If the arts are to take a role in shaping and humanising emerging technological environments, individuals and arts constituencies must start to imagine at a much larger scale of creativity.
Telematic Dreaming Kajaani Finland 1992
The same year, Paul Sermon created the above work Telematic Dreaming, positioning two beds, one in Finland, and the other in England, and linking them by projecting their respective realtime images onto each other. By doing so, Sermon enabled human interaction between the performer in one space, and the the visitor in the other with technologically mediated tools, acknowledging the concern of Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz that technology might lack temperature, warmth, human touch, filling this gap which Roy Ascott refers to as “deep-seated fears of the machine coming to dominate the human will and of a technological formalism erasing human content and values.”
As comparing to Kit Galloway and Sherri Rabinowitz’s work Hole-in-Space1980, an earlier example realised with similar technology, Sermon created a more personal environment in Telematic dreaming by introducing a bed to the setting. Often associated with relaxation and intimacy, the notion of a bed elevated a sense of privacy in the visitors. The possible forms of interaction emerged between the telematic participants over a bed in the Third Space, such as “touching” each other gently and simply resting and gazing into the others, thus appeared much humanised, and warmer.
To highlight the human factor that defines the work, Sermon also confines the possible senses engaged by excluding the transmission of the realtime sound component, thus prompted the participants to primarily “see with our hands and touch with our eyes”. Hence a nearly spiritual interchange between the participants is established. This connection, this new level of consciousness and creativity, Roy Ascott would say there is love.
One Reply to “Research critique: Telematic dreaming, 1992”
Very interesting conclusion: that there is in fact love in the telematic embrace. Paul Sermon was a student of Roy Ascott and you can see how Telematic Dreaming directly engages Ascott’s question by constructing an installation that tests, examines and critiques this complex idea. You are right in that the participants of Telematic Dreaming are sensing real intimacy despite geographical separation, and despite the mediation of their bodies in the third space.
You begin with the quote about scale, it would have been relevant and appropriate to the use of that quote, if you are going to reference Hole in Space, that while Telematic Dreaming involves only two participants at a time, Hole in Space, is a public sculpture that essentially scales up the possibilities for the telematic embrace.
It would be a good question for tonight’s lecture by Paul Sermon, to discuss exactly what happens when telematics are scaled, and does this introduce something more powerful in terms of telecommunications art that brings people together in evocative ways.
Very interesting conclusion: that there is in fact love in the telematic embrace. Paul Sermon was a student of Roy Ascott and you can see how Telematic Dreaming directly engages Ascott’s question by constructing an installation that tests, examines and critiques this complex idea. You are right in that the participants of Telematic Dreaming are sensing real intimacy despite geographical separation, and despite the mediation of their bodies in the third space.
You begin with the quote about scale, it would have been relevant and appropriate to the use of that quote, if you are going to reference Hole in Space, that while Telematic Dreaming involves only two participants at a time, Hole in Space, is a public sculpture that essentially scales up the possibilities for the telematic embrace.
It would be a good question for tonight’s lecture by Paul Sermon, to discuss exactly what happens when telematics are scaled, and does this introduce something more powerful in terms of telecommunications art that brings people together in evocative ways.