[-empyre-] Participatory Art: New Media and the Archival Trace
Hana Iverson
hanaiver at gmail.com
Thu Jun 4 05:45:27 EST 2009
Thank you, Sarah, for introducing the topic for this week. I also
would like to thank Renate and Tim for inviting me to be part of this
conversation. As a preface to my engagement in the discussion of
participatory art practices, I would like to explain a bit more about
the Neighborhoood Narrtatives Project.
As mentioned, Neighborhood Narratives is an internationally
networked locative media education project. It explores three themes--
place/space, embodied practice and the merger of mixed reality and
mobility. The focus on embodied practice addresses and analyzes the
ways in which moving bodies through space alters the stasis of the
built environment. I invited a group of choreographers to collaborate
in the teaching setting, and participate in the investigation of how
a constantly changing sense of place affects the way in which we
stabilize our sense of orientation. The Neighborhood Narratives
Project has established a collaboration with the Center for Creative
Research (CCR) http://www.centerforcreativeresearch.org/ , a multi-
year pilot project designed to create and implement, innovative long-
term strategies for artist-university interaction. The Center is
currently made up of eleven Founding Fellows: Ann Carlson, Pat
Graney, David Gordon, Margaret Jenkins, Bebe Miller, Ralph Lemon, Liz
Lerman, Eiko Otake, Dana Reitz, Elizabeth Streb and Jawole Willa Jo
Zollar.
With plans to broaden the national and international network beyond
its initial locations (Tokyo, London, Rome, New York, Philadelphia
and New Brunswick), the primary goal of Neighborhood Narratives is
the creation of an evolving, embodied global portrait comprised of
small projects linked through practice that integrate technology with
other arts, accumulated over time and distance.
These initiatives support my research into how contemporary media
intersects with urban environments; the social and cultural
influences that define public place and public art. I think this
touches directly on the "the work of art as social interstice
(Bourriaud )" I am keenly interested in the “in-between”, the third
space (to reference Foucault’s notion of Heterotopias in his essay
“Of Other Spaces” and its claim to the site, as central to culture
and set aside) and its relationship to trace as ephemeral, and trace
as archive. These new sites and their corresponding activities can
be determined to constitute what we refer to as mixed reality.
This relates both to the traces inherent in/on the body, and
extends beyond, to the traces in space, created by new communities
that are developing around shared ideas and interests (i.e blogs,
twitter). Whether visible or invisible, the archives that are being
created by the various actions – speech and otherwise - are
producing a new social order. “The technical structure of the
archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable
content even in its very coming into existence and in its
relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it
records the event. (Derrida, p16)”
So, in what way are artists participating in this producing of
events? In what space/place do they occur? In what way are the
condtioning effects of place stlll active, though not available to
the naked eye?
These are questions that I would like to investigate.
Hana
On Jun 3, 2009, at 12:44 PM, sarah drury wrote:
> 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
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 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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>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>> _______________________________________________
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