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a conversation with eduardo kac
Anna Couey Eduardo's work spans performance art, artist's books, public installation, holography, telecommunications and telepresence. Several of his recent telecommunications projects have utilized remote control and "communication" between different species or humans/machines. In one such work, a collaboration with Ikuo Nakamura, a caged canary's song is transmitted via the Internet to a Philodendron, whose response (measured by the voltage fluctuation in its leaves) triggers and determines the performance of a digital sound work. Kac describes this work thus: "the inter-species experience observed in the gallery reflects our own longing for interaction...this interactive installation is ultimately about human isolation and loneliness, and about the very possibility of communication." Anna Couey Eduardo Kac is a writer and artist who works with computers, holography, telepresence, video, and the Internet. He is the assistant professor of New Media in the Department of Art at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington. Eduardo Kac is a member of the Editorial Board of the international art journal Leonardo. In 1995 he lectured from coast to coast at prestigious American universities, such as Yale and the University of Washington. He also lectured extensively at conferences and symposia around the world, including Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice, France; University of Amsterdam, Holland; Ars Electronica Conference, Linz, Austria; Interface 3 Conference, Hamburg, Germany, and Art in the XXI Century, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1995 he received the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council for his computer art. He was also the recipient of the Shearwater Foundation Holography Award, the most prestigious international award in the field of holographic art. In 1996 he will be showing two new commissioned pieces: one at the "Out of Bounds" exhibition, organized by Nexus Contemporary Art and the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, in Atlanta, and the Siggraph Art Show, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in New Orleans. Both pieces will link physical spaces to the Internet. Anna Couey You've worked across a wide array of media...some of your work explores the body, or language, or the human condition. Is there a unifying vision that connects your artistic production, or is each work its own statement? Judy Malloy Beth Kanter, Arts Wire Beth Kanter, Arts Wire Timothy Collins (tmc) Eduardo Kac Beth Kanter, Arts Wire I work for Arts Wire, I'm the Network Coordinator. I had the pleasure of inheriting the job from Anna. I'm not an interactive artist, although my background is in music. I'm coming from an "arts administrator addicted to telecommunications" perspective. I only had time to do a quick visit to the first Web site that Anna referenced in her introduction. I thought I might do this to dive in and get started. My goal was to quickly learn enough information about you so I wouldn't ask a really stupid question. But, of course, there is no guarantee. To tell the truth, I don't think that stupid questions are bad. Like mistakes, they are good teachers. If you don't ask, you don't learn. If you don't learn, you don't grow. With that said . . . What is telepresence? In reading your responses above, I was struck by your words: Now, I will tell you why and hope that it doesn't offend you. I've been reading lots of press releases, mewspaper articles, books, and other stuff that is coming out of the for-profit sector about "intranets" "telecommuters" and the "virtual workplace." Recently, a new book called Scared Cows Make the Best Hamburgers was published. The author, whose name escapes at the moment, main thesis is: "Telecommunications and virtual workplaces are doomed to failure because successful for-profit entities require face-to-face interaction for teamwork, innovation, collaboration, and efficiency." So . . . I guess what I'm trying to ask is: How might your experience/wisdom in telepresence art work be applied to a telecommuting workplace to make it work? Or do you think telepresence is something that only exists in making interactive art? Anna Couey Eduardo, am curious to see your response to Beth's question, and partly because it connects to another - how do the different media you've worked with effect communication, and with it perceptions of self and reality? Do you agree with the author that Beth alluded to (paraphrasing here!) that mediated connections simply limit communication? I agree with you that communication requires shared space. It reminds me of Gene Youngblood describing (years ago now!) the difficulty of communicating new ideas because the language to communicate them doesn't exist. Whereas we have a semblance anyway of shared language and so, understanding. I take it from what you say that you believe communication can actually occur. How do you know when the shared space is there, and is it something you can predetermine? Jeff Gates, ArtFBI If so, I want you to know that it was YOU who was instrumental in moving me in this interactive telecommunications direction. And a lot has happened since we first talked. Welcome! Eduardo Kac You ask (#8) about telepresence and telecommuting. I see telepresence as directly related to telerobotics. What I call "telepresence art" is created in that zone of intersection where telerobotics, communication media, computers, and interactivity meet. I understand that others will interpret the word in different ways. French philosopher Pierre Levy, for example, told me once that for him telepresence takes place even over a regular telephone call. I understand clearly what he means, but I use the word in direct relationship to telerobotics (which is the original sense of the word). Concerning telecommuting: I can see how it can be practical in many instances, but the idea of reducing human activities to productive factors makes the major mistake of forgetting the human element itself. We don't go to a restaurant just because we are hungry. Dinning out is a social experience in itself. We don't go to a shopping center because we need this and that. It is also a social experience. Humans like to see and be seen because this builds social bonds, reinforces the image we have of ourselves. It constructs and preserves our identity. The same thing happens in the workplace. The social interaction that takes place at work is a very important component that disappears with telecommuting. Eduardo Kac I think of most of my works as avenues to investigate the question you raise. My performance work emerged in the context of the political transition in Brazil from a military dictatorship to a democracy. At the time of my performance work (1980 to 1982), this transition was still a fragile one. With the discovery of a new sense of political freedom, came the revelation of a new sense of social and artistic freedom. My performances of the period included texts written specifically for public presentation. These texts were written with the raw material of the forbidden side of the Portuguese language. I wanted to turn it around and use this forbidden vocabulary with a liberating power, with a cathartic power, and create a political view that was tied in with an appreciation, a liberation, a celebration of the human body. The performances from 1980-82 had elements of scatology, surprise, humor, subversion, gags, and the mundane. In these poetic performances, the so-called vulgar or bad words became noble and positive. Scatological discourse and political di In my work in the early 80's, the body was everything. The body had to be present. It was from the sounds of the body that the work emanated. The body was the tool I used to question conventions, dogmas, and taboos -- patriarchy, religion, heterosexuality, politics, puritanism, etc. The body became my writing medium at the very end ultimately. Text dissolved into flesh. The world has changed dramatically in the past fifteen years. Ours is a society that can save lives or massacre other societies from afar. Physical presence is acquiring a more and more secondary role in both processes. We use remote vision to look inside our own bodies and inside celestial bodies. We collect samples of both. Ironically, the distances between different cultures shrink on a physical level but remain largely untouched on a social and political level. The perpetuation of distance as such, be it territorial or symbolic, becomes an impediment to knowledge of different cultures and viewpoints. I You also asked:"Do you agree with the author that Beth alluded to (paraphrasing here!) that mediated connections simply limit communication?" And you stated: " I take it from what you say that you believe communication can actually occur. " I do not take it for granted that communication can occur. If an ad makes somebody go to the store and buy a product, I would not call this communication, or "effective communication." I would think of it as persuasive discourse. Once the shared space is created, there will always be tension between what I say and what you hear, between what I write and what you read. In this shared space, language, sounds, and images oscillate between my intentions and your intentions, between my expectations and your expections, and so on. I think of this oscillation as communication, regardless of whether one can get a point accross or not -- i.e., regardless of one's "success" in expressing an idea or obtaining the desired response. All communication is mediated. Mediation by verbal language is complemented by body language, for example. If we conduct this conversation in French, for example, we may feel differently. We may inhabit another persona. We may think and act differently. Electronic media add another layer of complexity to the oscillation I mentioned above. In this sense, it opens up fascinating possibilities for art. Eduardo Kac Beth Kanter, Arts Wire I do have another question and excuse my ignorance, but what is telerobotics? I envision pedaling on my exercise bike while typing into the computer. I'm sure that's not it though, :-) Can you explain it to me? Jeff Gates, ArtFBI How many Brazilian telecom artists can there be who have had some contact with CMU? Anyway, I digress. On with the converstion. I got a chance to peruse your web site and found it to be a repository of wonderful experiments. I am teaching a class at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on web design (entirely via the Net, btw) and will direct my students your way. I downloaded the vrml viewer and entered, for the first time that 3D world. It was wonderfully spacious! And especially nice when I came upon the words backwards! A really nice extension of poetry. My business partner is a poet and I will let him know of your piece. Judy Malloy Jeff Gates, ArtFBI Eduardo Kac Traditionally, robots are thought of as self-guiding devices. A telerobot has little or no independent features. A telerobot is controlled remotely by a human operator. Telerobotics is the field dedicated to designing, making, and studying telerobots. Eduardo Kac Anna Couey Eduardo, really enjoyed reading about your performance work...the examples you used to portray the reduction of the role of physical presence show the omnipotence of telepresence over physical. It made me think of ways that power works - even without technical teleapparatus. The sheltering of people in power - secretaries screening phone calls; decisionmakers in time of war who are far away from the battlefield - hasn't this existed for a long time? So what does telepresence mean in terms of our social relationships? Also, just to clarify my post (#9), by "effect communication" I meant "bring about, or cause communication." Much more in your post to think about...but will stop here for now and say goodnight! Jeff Gates, ArtFBI Well, we seem to have Bruce Breland in common here. I actually met Bruce through his son, Jeff, who was a grad student of mine at the Maryland Institute, College of Art. Bruce is in Washington State now, I believe. Eduardo Kac I mentioned "effective communication" because very often communication is thought in terms of how "successful" one is in getting a point accross. I think that it is essential to move away from the dichotomy "success/failure" when approaching the complexity of the communicative phenomenon. I'll be back to address your question about telepresence and our social relationships. Judy Malloy Eduardo Kac In a growing tendency observable since the sixties, when videotape and communication satellites became the major vectors in forming the grammar of television, many important social events (both of a progressive and conservative nature) have been experienced as media events. Recent examples would include the historic democracy movement in China and the Gulf War. Not that these events became the content of special programs; the new phenomenon is in that for us these events took place in the media. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Chinese crowds were cheering American reporters as heroes and asking "Get our story out!" and that missiles transmitted from their own perspective images of their targets as they approached them, until the very moment of the explosion, when all we saw was a noisy screen. What one observes here is that the meaning of actions no longer results purely and simply from the actions themselves, from negotiations between co-present inter-actors; meaning is now ge Television is of particular importance here because it is the mass medium par excellence, the most influential medium worldwide (as compared to books, movies, magazines, radio, newspapers, computers, etc.). It is easy to see that television's influence will grow even stronger once it becomes integrated with computers and the Internet, which is already happening in a small scale, and once fiber-optic networks become as ordinary as the introspective walkman. I mention the walkman because in its private sensorial experience it can be seen as the epiphenomenon of a society that chooses to remove itself from public space. Away from the public space, we experience different forms of socialization as phone conversations or through the electronic Agora which is television (or e-mail systems, or special networks such as the French Minitel). More and more the phenomenon that used to be thought of as "direct" experience becomes electronically mediated experience without us really noticing it Eduardo Kac Here it is again. In a growing tendency observable since the sixties, when videotape and communication satellites became the major vectors in forming the grammar of television, many important social events (both of a progressive and conservative nature) have been experienced as media events. Recent examples would include the historic democracy movement in China and the Gulf War. Not that these events became the content of special programs; the new phenomenon is in that for us these events took place in the media. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Chinese crowds were cheering American reporters as heroes and asking "Get our story out!" and that missiles transmitted from their own perspective images of their targets as they approached them, until the very moment of the explosion, when all we saw was a noisy screen. What one observes here is that the meaning of actions no longer results purely and simply from the actions themselves, from negotiations between co-present inter-actors; meaning is now ge Television is of particular importance here because it is the mass medium par excellence, the most influential medium worldwide (as compared to books, movies, magazines, radio, newspapers, computers, etc.). It is easy to see that television's influence will grow even stronger once it becomes integrated with computers and the Internet, which is already happening in a small scale, and once fiber-optic networks become as ordinary as the introspective walkman. I mention the walkman because in its private sensorial experience it can be seen as the epiphenomenon of a society that chooses to remove itself from public space. Away from the public space, we experience different forms of socialization as phone conversations or through the electronic Agora which is television (or e-mail systems, or special networks such as the French Minitel). More and more the phenomenon that used to be thought of as "direct" experience becomes electronically mediated experience without us really noticing it Eduardo Kac I'll divide in 3 parts. #1 In a growing tendency observable since the sixties, when videotape and communication satellites became the major vectors in forming the grammar of television, many important social events (both of a progressive and conservative nature) have been experienced as media events. Recent examples would include the historic democracy movement in China and the Gulf War. Not that these events became the content of special programs; the new phenomenon is in that for us these events took place in the media. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Chinese crowds were cheering American reporters as heroes and asking "Get our story out!" and that missiles transmitted from their own perspective images of their targets as they approached them, until the very moment of the explosion, when all we saw was a noisy screen. What one observes here is that the meaning of actions no longer results purely and simply from the actions themselves, from negotiations between co-present inter-actors; meaning is now ge Eduardo Kac It got garbled again. Is there a problem with the server? Thanks. Judy Malloy Anna Couey From ekac1@service1.uky.edu Sun Mar 17 00:08:40 1996 Television is of particular importance here because it is the mass medium par excellence, the most influential medium worldwide (as compared to books, movies, magazines, radio, newspapers, computers, etc.). It is easy to see that television's influence will grow even stronger once it becomes integrated with computers and the Internet, which is already happening in a small scale, and once fiber-optic networks become as ordinary as the introspective walkman. I mention the walkman because in its private sensorial experience it can be seen as the epiphenomenon of a society that chooses to remove itself from public space. Away from the public space, we experience different forms of socialization as phone conversations or through the electronic Agora which is television (or e-mail systems, or special networks such as the French Minitel). More and more the phenomenon that used to be thought of as "direct" experience becomes electronically mediated experience without us really noticing it. To "get in touch" (touch!) is to make a phone call. People are getting married after having developed personal relationships over the Internet. >From a technological standpoint we are not so far from routinely touching someone remotely through a phone call by means of force-feedback devices. Like in Heinlein's "Waldo," the dream is of being there without ever leaving here. At different levels we subordinate local space to remote action promoting what Baudrillard so succinctly described as "the satellitization of the real." What we understand by communication is changing because physical distances of the public space no longer impose absolute restrictions on certain kinds of bodily experiences (audition, vision, touch, proprioception - i.e., sense of limb position, mobility, etc.) as they once did. Anna Couey Eduardo, your point about effective communication not being the same as getting a message across is good to remember/think of. And has a lot of interpretations - ambiguity/multiplicity of meaning, but even more so, communication being about dialogue and creation, not just function. Storytelling - who tells what to whom - does have a powerful impact on our perceptions of reality. And our imaginations too, I think. TV holds so much power not just thru the abstraction, but because, as it currently exists, the stories it tells are limited and its reach is broad. Whole sectors of reality are excluded from the history it makes. The Internet, for all its distance from the body, still promises to offer people to people communication. I hope so, and we'll see. If it can do that I'm willing to sacrifice some of my day to the computer screen :-) Since we're edging into the 2nd half of the month, & I don't want it to go by without asking...my next question is ..what are you working on now?! Thanks! Judy Malloy Eduardo Kac Both pieces create situations that call for a sense of community and collaboration. Timothy Collins (tmc) Hank Bull, Western Front Eduardo Kac Eduardo Kac Anna Couey Anna Couey Is there anything you'd like to add before the month rolls over? Eduardo Kac I enjoyed the dialogue very much. See you on the Net, and hopefully in person! Hank Bull, Western Front The Shanghai Fax sgow was called "Let's Talk About Money". We publicized byfax and Internet from Vancouver. The work came in over a three week period, 80 contributions from 16 countries. It was displayed in the gallery of the Hua Shan Art College. I came for the last three days. The Shanghai artists who collaborated in this project gave me the red carpet. We did a seminar discussion with students and critics in the gallery. As this was the firsttime in China, many questions were raised, leading ultimately to a consideration of the problematics of of such concepts as "collaboration", "network" and "Interactive". We use these words as ideals of a sort but they conceal all sorts of power relationships. That's where subversion comes in. Most of the media and even words we use to today pretend to communicate but in fact do not. Even in an ordinary conversation a great deal is lost through various kinds of "noise"--coughs, interruptions, talking at once, etc. Communicating across cultural or language barriers is all the more difficult. It can be useful to invent absurd structures that reveal the illusions of propaganda and advertising ideologies. More personally, I feel that our ability to communicate at all is a sort of miracle, that often comes about more through chance, conicidence, or psychic phenomena than by literal intention. Judy Malloy Beth Kanter, Arts Wire Anna Couey Hank Bull, Western Front Anna Couey Yeah, it'd be great to develop some kind of link between Hypernation and Arts Wire. Do you have something particular in mind? One possibility would be to have an AW discussion that could be fed into the larger assemblage...or those here who are interested in participating could simply subscribe to your list - each becomes a statement on the idea of "nations" in cyberspace. I think an interactivity & power topic could move along slowly, at a rate that we can all keep up w/along w/everything else...if you wanna try that :-) Judy Malloy RARA AVIS, AN INTERACTIVE NETWORKED TELEPRESENCE OPEN TO PARTICIPATION FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHAT, WHEN, WHERE: Rara Avis, an interactive networked telepresence installation by Eduardo Kac, opened to the public on January 17, 1997, at the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin, and on the Internet. The exhibition closes on March 2, 1997. To see live Web uploads, go to http://128.83.58.140/Raravisoft/index.html. You will also find a link to this site from Kac's original Rara Avis site, shown at the Olympic Arts Festival in the Summer of 1996: http://www.uky.edu/FineArts/Art/kac/raraavis.html. To participate in the interactive component of the show, connect to the Rara Avis Reflector with CU-SeeMe and/or Enhanced CU-SeeMe. The IP address is 128.83.58.142. With your microphone you'll be able to speak through the telemacaw's mouth. Through your computer speakers you'll hear the sounds in the environment, including the singing of the birds. If you have Enhanced CU-SeeMe, you'll be able to see the space through both eyes of the telerobotic Macowl, otherwise you'll see the space through one eye. On the MBone, log on to the Rara Avis session. For more information on works by Eduardo Kac, visit his web site at: http://www.uky.edu/FineArts/Art/kac/kachome.html. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A white aviary confines a large colorful telerobotic macaw and thirty gray, small birds. Through a critique of the notion of "exoticism" embodied on this bird with brilliant plumage, Eduardo Kac invites us to look at familiar spaces and ideas in unfamiliar ways. As local participants wear a virtual reality headset, they transport themselves to the body of the telerobot. At once inside and outside the aviary, and able to observe themselves in this situation from the point of view of the macaw, they also share the telerobotic body with Internet participants worldwide. What local participants look at is seen live on the Net. With their own voices, remote participants activate the vocal apparatus of the telemacaw. Birds and local participants respond to the incoming sounds. Located next to more stable artistic objects--paintings, sculptures and installations, as part of the *Out of Bounds: New Work by Eight Southeast Artists* exhibit, Kac's interactive telepresence aviary plays with the boundaries between material and immaterial presence, live birds and robotics, isolation and connectivity, VR and Art. Rara Avis continues Kac's investigations on how technology affects perception, exploring social, political and philosophical implications of communication processes. Pointing to the passage into virtual culture, Rara Avis confronts viewers with complex, yet playful issues--the interactions among humans, animals and machines. Its aesthetic of hybridization defies traditional definitions of art as the making of form, displacing in the process, the unidirectionality of media culture and opening new dialogic channels to the viewers. Rara Avis--a macaw-robot--lends its body to the public, offering a range of experiences that start, ironically, by making ours its *exotic* existence. In this piece, Eduardo Kac merges immediate perceptual phenomena with a heightened awareness of what affects us but is visually absent, physically remote. Local and online participants experience the space in complex, different ways. "This suggests that the mediascape--the highly technological environment in which we live--modulates and defines our perception of reality," said the artist. "In a word, the events taking place in Austin will be perceived differently by viewers and participants worldwide, depending on the kind of access they have. Which makes us realize the inequalities promoted by technology, and, more importantly, that reality is never the same for everybody." ------------------------------- Judy Malloy Contact: ssinsley@starnetinc.com ARTIST EDUARDO KAC IMPLANTS IDENTIFICATION MICROCHIP TIME CAPSULE, AN INTRACORPOREAL ART WORK BY KAC, ARTIST'S ARM WILL BE SCANNED VIA THE INTERNET ------------------------------------------------------------- What: Event in which a microchip (identification transponder tag) will be implanted in the artist's left arm Artist: Eduardo Kac (ekac@artic.edu) When: Tuesday, November 11, 1997, at 9:30 PM S Cultura, in the daily program
"Metropolis," at 9:30 PM Snd permanent site: http://www.ekac.org/timec.htm "Time Capsule" is a work-experience that lies somewhere between a local event-installation, a site-specific work in which the site itself is both the artist's body and a remote database, and a simulcast on TV and the Web. The object that gives the piece its title is a microchip with a programmed identification number which is integrated with a coil and a capacitor, all hermetically sealed in biocompatible glass. Scanning the implant generates a low energy radio signal (125 KHz) that energizes the microchip to transmit its unique and inalterable numerical code, which is shown on the scanner's 16-character Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). As we call "memory" the storage units of computers and robots, we antropomorphize our machines, making them look a little bit more like us. In the process, we mimic them as well. Memory today is on a chip. The body is traditionally seen as the sacred repository of human-only memories, acquired as the result of genetic inheritance or personal experiences. Memory chips are found inside computers and robots and not inside the human body yet. In "Time Capsule", the presence of the chip (with its recorded retrievable data) inside the body forces us to consider the co-presence of internal lived memories and external artificial memories within us. External memories become implants in the body, anticipating future instances in which events of this sort might become common practice and inquiring about the legitimacy and ethic implications of such procedures in the digital culture. Live transmissions on television and on the Web bring the issue closer to our living rooms. -------------------------------------------------------------- www.well.com/~couey/interactive/kac.html | |
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