[-empyre-] Participatory Art: New Media and the Archival Trace
Hana Iverson
hanaiver at gmail.com
Wed Jun 3 10:58:07 EST 2009
Hi All,
I would like to respond to Sarah’s comments about “the body as
dynamic screen, as image-receiving, image-generating surface.” The
body, merely by its method of orienting itself in space, is the
perceptive center. And the mental images that one generates as part
of the body’s reception of the world, are made up of memory and
perception, experiences which are socially as well as physically
inscribed. Our memories are a synthesis of experience, which is
socially and physically constructed by place.
“Place, according to Yi Fu Tuan (1977) combines a sense of position
within society and a sense of identity with a spatial location.
Places have historically been viewed as physical sites, with natural
and emotional endowments that speak to the limits of human freedom.
Not only are our human identities bound up with the hills and valleys
in which we live but our very humanness and humanity is bound in this
way. It is place that gives rise to humanness – in the form of
feelings, attachments, longing, nostalgia, desire, melancholy, and
fear. (Iverson, Sanders 2008)”
So, the body is never a neutral container, it is never blank, it is
never in that sense, a screen. It operates in the same way that
public place does, in that it is an active and dynamic entity, a
contested site, depending on the values it carries and reflects. It
is “image receiving and image generating” without any added
technology. In speaking of the internal states of the biological body
as in autoreceptor, I wonder if the technology of a performance can
actually create something on the level of say, hormones that the
brain will then detect? An autoreceptor “functions to control
internal cell processes, including synthesis and release of the
neurotransmitter.” If autoreception is used as a metaphor, I think
what Sarah is referring to is the idea that the response to the
traces created in The Walking Project have a physical effect on the
performer, creating a feedback that alters their body or perception
in some sensory way.
We seem to be speaking about two different sets of dynamics – one the
internal state of the physical/biological body, and the other, the
external body placed in the world. Both aspects of the body function
simultaneously, which is where we are in the territory of Bergson’s
sense of time and duration, time separated from space. There are
multiple sets of functions that happen simultaneously. Whether the
body exists in a heterotopic space or in an open, unconfined space,
has little relevance to the issue of the simultaneous functions of
the body. That multiplicity exists in whatever space they are in.
The hetertopic space will condition the social conditions of the
body, depending on what the nature of the heterotopia is i.e theater
or prison. Both spaces have specific criteria that reconstitute the
values of the people who inhabit them.
A project that I think very specifically engages both sets of body
functions in very interesting ways is Akitsugu Maebayashi’s Sonic
Interface, a portable hearing device that is made from headphones,
microphones, and a laptop computer. The participant is invited to
walk around the city, and experiences modified sonic environments
processed real time (with a 3 second delay) from the sounds it picks
up. The experience of the altered environment generated by the
software program influences and questions the sense of space and
time. Mayebayashi has focused on the auditory sense as an interface
between the body and the environment, in a different way than an
audio walk of any kind – locative or pre-recorded. By uncoupling
sound from vision, this project questions what we assume as "real".
"Presence" requires the constant stabilizing and synchronizing of
vision and sound; an uncoupling of the two opens up the possibility
for other presences, other experiences of "self." This separation
also importantly has the effect of destabilizing the experience of
"place."
I am not sure that any of this is what you would describe as the body
as surface, because in this case, the body is not a surface but a
cognitive entity that is navigating the world. It is separating
perception from memory, and focusing on the orientation of the
biologic body. What has shifted by experience is the world that the
body is orienting itself to, and in that space, perhaps we are
opening to the suspension of time, and perhaps the only narrative is
the one that is experienced viscerally.
I think here is where we get into the Bergson/Delueze vs. Kant
debate about the idea that perception is matter. And perhaps this
matter, if it could be traced, would be the narrative.
Hana
Hana Iverson
Media Artist,
Neighborhood Narratives Project,
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
New Brunswick, NJ
hiverson at rci.rutgers.edu; hanaiver at gmail.com
http://www.neighborhoodnarratives.net
On Jun 2, 2009, at 11:25 AM, Renate Ferro wrote:
> Welcome to Sarah Drury and Hana Iverson who have been discussing the
> socially inscribed networked body in relation to their own work. We
> invite them to consider this month's theme: "Participatory Art: New
> Media and the Archival Trace." This notion of Participatory Art has
> resonances from the writings of Nicholas Bourriaud and Claire Bishop.
> While Hana and Sarah discuss their own ideas about the topic we
> will be
> interspersing other posts from other artists, curators, and writers
> who
> also were thinking about these issues in relationship to their own
> work.
>
> We also want to encourage all of our empyre subscribers (close to
> 1250)
> who have been lurking during the past month to PARTICIPATE.
>
> So welcome Hana and Sarah!
>
> Featured Guests:
> Week 1: Hana Iverson (US) and Sarah Drury (US)
>
> Hana Iverson’s work spans photography, video, installation, and
> interactive media. Her current work focuses on location-based
> installations
> that integrates mobile interfaces. Iverson currently teaches at
> Rutgers,
> The State
> University of New Jersey and is the founder and director of the
> Neighborhood
> Narratives Project, an internationally networked, community-based
> learning
> environment where students investigate the complex means by which cell
> phones, GPS, mobile recording devices, interactive public
> installation and
> social
> network games affect their knowledge of and relation to lived space
> http://www.neighborhoodnarratives.net. She is the former Director
> of the
> New
> Media Interdisciplinary Concentration at Temple University.
>
> Sarah Drury is a media artist working with video, interactive
> installation
> and performative media. Her work has been presented at international
> venues,
> including: BAM¹s Next Wave Festival, National Theater of Belgrade,
> and Boston
> CyberArts Festival, Brooklyn Museum, the Kitchen, SIGGRAPH, ISEA,
> Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Sound Cultures Symposium,
> Performative Sites,
> ACM Multimedia, Artists Space, Hallwalls, Worldwide Video Festival
> (Hague),
> and on PBS. Grants include fellowships from the National Endowment
> for the
> Arts, and grants from the Leeway Foundation, and Franklin Furnace.
>
> Drury¹s work with sensing technologies engages body, sound and
> image in
> complex multisensory narratives, in diverse contexts such as
> installation,
> opera and performance. Recent projects explore issues of embodiment,
> collaborative creation and emergent narrative.
>
> Sarah Drury is an associate professor of video and interactive
> media at the
> Temple University Film & Media Arts Program. She holds masters
> degrees from
> the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program and NYU/
> International Center
> of Photography. She has also been on the faculty of the New York
> University
> Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU Art & Media Program and
> the
> International Center of Photography.
>
>
>>
>> Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
>> Moderators, empyre soft skinned space
> "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>
>> Renate Ferro
>> Visiting Assistant Professor
>> Department of Art
>> Cornell University, Tjaden Hall
>> Ithaca, NY 14853
>>
>> Email: <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
>> Website: http://www.renateferro.net
>>
>>
>> Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre
>>
>> Art Editor, diacritics
>> http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
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>>
>
>
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Department of Art
> Cornell University, Tjaden Hall
> Ithaca, NY 14853
>
> Email: <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
> Website: http://www.renateferro.net
>
>
> Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre
>
> Art Editor, diacritics
> http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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