[-empyre-] Participatory Art: New Media and the Archival Trace

Thu Jun 4 02:44:40 EST 2009

Hi Hana and all,

First I wanted to acknowledge the new topic for this month, Participatory
Art: New Media and the Archival Trace, and to thank Renate and Tim for
inviting me to be part of this conversation, along with Hana Iverson and a
number of other invited guests.  This is a segue from the previous
discussion on critical motion practice in May, which also engaged various
issues of participatory art.  Therefore, we are picking up the discussion in
a transitional mode between last week's focus on embodiment, narrative and
motion practices in performance space and public space, and the focus on
participatory practices and relational aesthetics in real and virtual spaces
that has been articulated for the coming month.

Rather than introduce myself again, here is the link to my introduction last
week: https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2009-May/001668.html

So I wanted to respond to Hana's post of yesterday, in which she was
considering the body as a site, the negotiation of internal experience and
external perception, in parallel consideration with way the body takes shape
dynamically in encounters with public space:

"[The body] 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."

So to use this idea of the body as "'image receiving and image generating'
without any added technology" as a model for the body and participation in
performance, installation and public/participatory frameworks.

The idea of the body as an active generator of images of itself and of the
world, with or without mediating technology, is an idea of the body that
resists its objectification.  Bernadette Wegenstein uses the term "the body
in pieces" to identify the figure of the body in contemporary performance
art: the body as an assemblage of fragments, the body as a set of processes,
a non-holistic body concept that resists standards of what the body is. The
body as a movement process, a state of becoming, underlies last month's
discussion of critical motion practice.  I want to carry forward this
ongoing questioning of the body into the discussion of participatory
practices and theories, which tends to focus more directly on the social and
political, on the body and its actions in processes of exchange.

Renate and Tim suggest a framing of participatory practices via the theories
of Nicholas Bourriaud and Claire Bishop.  Bourriaud talks about "the work of
art as social interstice": "an interstice is a space in social relations
which, although it fits more or less harmoniously and openly into the
overall system, suggests possibilities for exchanges other than those that
prevail within the system.  Exhibitions of contemporary art occupy precisely
the same position within the field of the trade of representations.  They
create free spaces and periods of time whose rhythms are not the same as
those that organize everyday life, and they encourage an inter-human
intercourse which is different to the 'zones of communication' that are
forced upon us."

The work of art as social interstice frames the viewer as participant,
destabilizing viewer/object relationships, and the location of “image
receiving and image generating” subject is also put into motion.
sd
>  
> 
> 
> ?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
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>>> Art Editor, diacritics
>>> http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/
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>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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
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>>> 
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