[-empyre-] bandwidth aesthetics

[Felix Sattler <felix@querformarte.de>]

fwded from Honor as we are having trouble with the automatic content  
filtering system.
sorry for the inconvenience, it's a great post anyway, sorry it's  
delayed!!! felix

Hi everyone.

I wanted to thank you all for your insights thus far on the topic of  
streaming + internet broadcasting.  I'm finding the debate really  
fascinating.

I wonder if I could contribute my two lipa's worth, with a sketch of an  
idea I've been thinking about for a little while -- which is the way  
that technical nature of the network has shaped the aesthetics of  
streaming media artwork.  This has been addressed on  [-empyre-]  in  
some sense within this discussion already, in the dialogue about the  
teleology of delay, but I wonder if this can be taken further …

As we've deduced from the discussions thus far, streaming media is not  
merely being used in an artistic context to create online versions of  
existing 'offline' sound or film work.  In much the same way as we saw  
the architecture and language of the internet being reconfigured in the  
'site-specific' works of jodi, Alexei Shulgin, Vuk Cosic and co.  
between 95 - 97 (the so-called heroic period of net.art), I think now  
streaming is likewise producing works which can be read as specific  
observations on, or products of, the medium.

Artists creating video and audio work to be streamed online have to  
bear the limitations of the media (bandwidth, codecs, buffering etc)  
very much in mind during the creation of their work.  They have to work  
with, rather than against, the characteristics of the media.  This  
creates all sorts of interesting challenges, and the resulting works  
can tell us more about streaming media as a creative medium.

I think its possible to see something emerging within streaming that  
could be referred to as 'bandwidth aesthetics'.

	 I should say that what I'm referring to here is mainly the aesthetics  
of narrowband streaming - ie streaming with slow internet connections.   
I'm not so familiar with much of the experimentation with internet2 or  
very wideband connections.  I am very much a part of the internet  
demographic which still accesses the internet from crappy dial up  
modems or dodgy DSL connections ;-> and as such my knowledge of  
streaming media is characterised by this experience of the internet.

But I think that the qualities of the inherently laggy, congested  
internet as we experience it from modems or slow cable connections are  
an important shaping mechanism in how art located within the network is  
created.

To illustrate this a bit better, it sometimes helps to think  
historically.  One might say that creative streaming media explorations  
connect to a trajectory of practice dating back to the work of video  
artists from the 1960s and early 70s.  Many practitioners at this time  
actively exploited the technical limitations of video technology in  
highly inventive ways. This period was also the time in which  
performance art was becoming an increasingly important part of  
contemporary practice.  I think there's some interesting analogies  
between work which was happening at this historical and technological  
moment, and work which was developed by streaming media practitioners  
in the late 1990s, and continues to evolve today.

Below I've jotted down a few historical and contemporary  
juxtapositions, which are playful musings on the loop-like nature of  
history. I've shown some of these { perhaps illusory } concordances  
over the past couple of years at a few events which explored the  
emerging field of streaming media art, such as the 'Art of Streaming  
Media' at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and the  
'exStream' conference in Sofia, Bulgaria.  This is by no means a  
well-thought out art historical treatise, but more a compilation of  
some public reflections :->
These aesthetic linkages don't make a lot of sense unless you are  
actually looking at the works, so I have tried to include URL and / or  
streaming references where possible.


	-> Arranged Marriage 1: Joan Jonas meet Aleksander Gubas <-

Let's rewind back to the early days of video art.  It is the 60s, and  
camcorders and video playback devices are completely new.
As well as being handsome devices which created unparalleled new  
possibilities, video technology was also comprised of hitherto  
mysterious components, which tended to break down a lot and do  
unexpected things. The technology distorted moving images.  The  
machines got stuck.

These technical frailties became a subject in and of themselves for  
artists of the period. In the iconic work 'Vertical Roll'  
<http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$tapedetail?VERTICALRO>, Joan Jonas  
exploited a technical glitch to create a meditative and absorbing work  
of art.  The rolling effect of the tracking glitch is celebrated rather  
than edited out.

If we fast-forward in time we see the streaming artist doing something  
similair. In a film made specifically for the net in 1999, 'Belgrade  
Frozen' <http://www.crsn.com/low-fi/video/frozen.ram>, Yugoslav  
filmmaker Aleksandar Gubas aesthetically exploits the tendency  
streaming video has to 'freeze' and 'buffer'.

Lev Manovich's 'Little Movies Vol.1: microcinema: cinema for the early  
Net', <http://www.manovich.net/little-movies/index.html> circa 1994,  
refers to a time when cinema was restricted by many of the limitations  
which now restrict streaming video. Manovich suggests a perhaps ironic  
association between the early days of cinema production and the present  
era of streaming production.


	-> Arranged Marriage 2: Vito Acconci meet Fakeshop  <-

In the early 1970s, artists such as Vito Acconci used video together  
with performance to create new forms.  Video and performance were  
folded together.  'Undertone'  
<http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$tapedetail?UNDERTONE> created in 1972  
is a good example. The artist seats himself at a table whose opposite  
end coincides with the bottom edge of the monitor. The viewer could  
imagine him/herself at the other end of the table. Acconci then  
proceeds to imagine a sexual exchange with a woman under the table.  He  
sets up a challenging relationship between the private and the public  
and the viewer and the performer in which the viewer is implicated in  
the sexual projections of the performer.

In more contemporary streaming work, by, for instance, the New York  
collective Fakeshop <http://www.fakeshop.com/>, performance and the  
concept of 'liveness' is an important aspect.  Fakeshop create  
performances from their studio in Brooklyn which incorporate elements  
of the net, such as online video conferencing, webcam feeds, streaming  
audio and other kinds of networked media into the narrative of the  
performance. Performance and network are folded together.


	-> Arranged Marriage 3: Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz meet Susan  
Collins  <-

Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz carried out a series of pioneering  
projects in the 1970s and the 1980s, under the rubric of the  
'Electronic Café' <http://www.ecafe.com/getty/table.html>.  They  
created events involving performers in different countries, using  
satellites.   At that time, satellites were the only viable means of  
transmitting live TV quality video across oceans (one might argue this  
is till true today). They wanted to demonstrate a performance space  
with no geographic boundaries, and thus created contexts where several  
performing artists, all of whom were separated by oceans and geography,  
appeared and performed together in the same live image. Everyone saw  
themselves all together, standing next to each other, able to talk with  
each other, and perform together.

This notion of telepresence - actions taking place in more than one  
place at one time, using telecommunications networks as a link - was an  
idea of great importance to artists in the 1970s and early 1980s.   
Works created during this period by Galloway & Rabinowitz, and also  
practitioners such as Robert Adrian X  
<http://www.t0.or.at/~radrian/BIO/index.html> showed the way that  
telecommunication could be used to blur geographical boundaries, and  
create live global events between dispersed artists.

This idea was immediately picked up by streaming media practitioners,  
as soon as the technology was invented in the early 1990s. One of the  
notable features of early streaming media cultural practice was a  
strong emphasis on collaboration, often across geographical boundaries.  
 Streaming media made real-time collective performances using sound,  
and sometimes video, possible.  Networks like the Xchange net.radio  
community <http://xchange.re-lab.net/>, initiated by Latvian media  
group, e-lab (now RIXC <http://www.rixc.lv> ) were early to experiment  
with these forms.

These types of practices filtered into many artists' works.  In 1998,  
British artist Susan Collins created a work called 'In Conversation'  
<http://www.inconversation.com/>.
Susan describes the work on her website as providing: "the means for  
two people, one in a public street, and one on the Internet to engage  
in a live dialogue with each other. The work explores the boundaries  
and social customs of distinctly different kinds of public spaces - the  
street and the Internet - each with its own established rules of  
engagement".

In Collins' conversations, one can almost hear the echo of Galloway &  
Rabinowitz's earlier telematic events.


	-> Arranged Marriage 4: Richard Serra meet Tjark Ihmels, Kay  
Märthesheimer  <-

One of the most commonly experienced technical qualities of using any  
media is delay.  Richard Serra's 1974 work Boomerang  
<http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?SERRAR> explores the  
effect delay has on the process of constructing a video work.  The tape  
analyses its own discourse and processes as it is being formulated; the  
audio delay is a key component.

Delay, buffering and looping is an inherent aspect of working with  
streaming media.  This was playfully examined by German artists, Tjark  
Ihmels & Kay Märthesheimer in their work 'The Media Doll's House'  
<http://homepages.img.fh-mainz.de/~kay/dollshouse/>. The project is all  
about delay, waiting, meditating.  The project takes its cue from the  
most commonly experienced technical element of streaming media,  
buffering.  It was commissioned for the streaming media initiative,  
'Playing Field' <http://www.playingfield.net/>.


	-> Arranged Marriage 5: Nick Crowe meet Iván Marino, Luis Negron &  
Andrea Nacach  <-

Linear narrative is a key component of many film and video works. But  
streaming video works are located within the interactive hypertextual  
space of the internet.  How can traditional filmic narrative be played  
out in a context which is almost antagonistic to passive viewing?  Is  
it possible to disrupt linear narritive flow, while still maintaining a  
sense of story?

One of the most intriguing examples of a streaming film which employs  
technologically interrupted narrative is Nick Crowe's, Discrete Packets  
made in 2000  
<http://www.nickcrowe.net/online/discretepackets/index.htm>.
The premise of the film is a man's search for his missing daughter. The  
story unfolds through the online research processes of the man, who  
uses missing persons websites, search engines, email and chat-rooms to  
try and locate his daughter. The viewer interacts with the man, by  
activating his web-searches, checking his email and connecting to the  
chat-sites with him, all the while trying to avoid false-endings, blind  
alleys and pit-stops within the story. Websites - some fake, some real  
- and streaming video move the viewer to the next step of the  
narrative, or occasionally maroon the viewer in a endless cycle of  
futile web searches.  The viewers choices allow a simple but highly  
enaging story to unfold.

Another work commissioned by the Playing Field initiative is 'In  
Death's Dream Kingdom' by Iván Marino, Luis Negron and Andrea Nacach  
<http://www.playingfield.net/ivan.htm> made in 2003. 'In Death's Dream  
Kingdom' has the structure of an audio-visual poem. The video was  
recorded in mental institutions that house people whose sense of  
perception is altered. The soundtrack - a combination of silence and  
minimal sounds - was made out of distorted noises from aeroplanes'  
black boxes. A story is told through streaming video, but the  
non-linear possibilities of an interactive interface allow the  
user/spectator to build up their own version of the work. The story can  
be told in multiple different ways, collaging narrative fragments  
together to create new nuanced versions of the narrative.



So, though these figments of curatorial conjugation are by no means an  
attempt to present a succinct overview of the aesthetics of streaming,  
they do perhaps point to a few characteristics which seem to be evident  
within this type of work.
Elements such as:
- aesthetic investigations of the limitations of the technology
- performance & live actions
- broadcasting & telematics
- delay, buffering & loops
- interruption of linear narrative
- hybridity - streaming combined other broadcast media
seem to pop up again and again within streaming artworks.


Anyway, perhaps some food for thought, or maybe just a junk-food snack?

In any case, greetings from a frosty evening in Riga ... & uz  
redzesˇanos...


Honor


	*

honor harger

r a d i o q u a l i a:
http://www.radioqualia.net

	*

present location: riga .lv
http://www.oto.lv/karte2.php?address=strelnieku%209

email: honor@va.com.au
phone:  +371 9387467
email-to-sms: honor@sms.lmt.lv [ v. short text messages only ]

	*

current work:
radio astronomy: the space station
http://frequencyclock.montevideo.nl/pMachineFree2.2.1/ 
weblog.php?id=C0_4_1