ARTStapJournal for Contemporary Visual & Sonic ArtVol.2 Issue 2

SALOME VOEGELIN - [Exploring the Critical 'I ']

HENRY SOLEMAN - [Interview by Studio Critical]

ARTSTAP ONLINE TOP ART GALLERIES & SPACES

OLGAANACKA - [Open Submission Award]

MARIA COLEMAN - [Reappraising the Disappearing Body and the Disembodied Eye through Multisensory Art - TITLE Award]

ALICE BURNS - [MAKERS Award]

SEAMUS McCORMACK - [MAKERS Award]

JULIETTE LOSQ - [MAKERS Award]

WILMA VISSERS - [MAKERS Award]

RICHARD CARR - [Between the Visual & the Spatial ; The Sonic Object]

ARTSTAP ONLINE TOP 5

FERGUS KELLY - [A Congregation of Vapours]

LUC MESSINEZIS - [Audiopsy Jerusalem: an existential ist approach to exploiting the soundscape for artistic purposes]

THE FRANCHISE PROGRAMME

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CONTRIBUTORS

SALOME VOEGELIN - 'Exploring the Critical 'I '' - [Invited Artist]

HENRY SOLEMAN - [Interview by Studio Critical]

ARTSTAP ONLINE TOP ART GALLERIES & SPACES

OLGAANACKA - [Open Submission Award]

MARIA COLEMAN - [Reappraising the Disappearing Body and the Disembodied Eye through Multisensory Art - TITLE Award]

ALICE BURNS - [MAKERS Award]

SEAMUS McCORMACK - [MAKERS Award]

JULIETTE LOSQ - [MAKERS Award]

WILMA VISSERS - [MAKERS Award]

RICHARD CARR - 'Between the Visual & the Spatial ; The Sonic Object' - [Invited Artist]

ARTSTAP ONLINE TOP 5

FERGUS KELLY - [A Congregation of Vapours]

LUC MESSINEZIS - 'Audiopsy Jerusalem: an existential ist approach to exploiting the soundscape for artistic purposes' - [Invited Artist]

THE FRANCHISE PROGRAMME

LIST OF INTERESTED DISTRIBUTORS FOR FUTURE (PRINTED) ISSUES

Ireland, Scotland, UK, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Spain, Canada, USA

NIVAL, NationalI rish Visual Arts Library, (NCAD, Dublin, I reland)

Museu dArt Contemporani de Barcelona, (Barcelona, Spain)

RUA RED, (Tallaght, Dublin, I reland)

The Burren College of Art, (co. Clare, I reland)

Basement project space, (cork, I reland)

Arttrai l YMCA, (cork, I reland)

GSA, Gorey School of Art, (co. Wexford, I reland)

Tinahely Courthouse Arts Centre (co. Wicklow, I reland)

The Little Ghost Gallery (co. Kilkenny, I reland)

SOMA Contemporary Art Box, (co. Waterford, I reland)

Basement Project Space, (co Cork, I reland)

NenaghArtsCentre, (co. Tipperary, I reland)

Number OneGallery, (co.Dublin, I reland)

Mothers Tankstation, (co. Dublin, I reland)

Exchange Gallery, (co. Dublin, I reland)

EnnistymonCourthouse Gallery & Studios, (co. Clare, I reland)

Tallaght Community Arts, (co. Dublin, I reland)

Pitzer Art Galleries, (Claremont, CA, USA)

Academy of Fine Arts, (Prague, Czeck Republic)

CollectiveGallery, (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Soundfjord Gallery & ResearchUnit, (London, UK)

Trailer project space, (Rotterdam.Netherlands)

Arteria Art Gallery, (Montreal,Canada)

221 A, (Vancouver, Canada)

Draiocht, (Blanchardstown, I reland)

CIT, Crawford School of Art, (Cork, I reland)

Catalyst Arts, (Belfast, Northern I reland)

Filmbase, (Temple Bar, I reland)

Cake Contemporary Arts, (co. Kildare, I reland)

ICPA, Colgate University, (NY, USA)

1 26 (Galway, I reland)

West Cork Arts Centre (cork, I reland)

Galway Arts Center, (Galway, I reland)

Darc Space, (Dublin, I reland)

Note From The Editor

Well what can we say! The ARTStap Team have been a busy bunch and we have made some major advancements

over the past 4 months, this is mainly down to the huge amount of international support we have received from all of

you, so thank you.

Yes, we are now ARTStap. Since the release of our previous Issue studentsZINE Vol.2 Issue 1 we have been

operating under a new name, ARTStap. This choice was made by the ARTStap Team to accommodate the wide and

varying practices, discpl ines and interests of our readers and all of you at the ARTStap Network. We also hope this

wil l al low us to reach an even wider international audience.

Over the past few months our international readership has expanded with our latest issue receiving over 22,000

reads/downloads, that is 7,000 more than our average readership for previous issues. Our online network of

professionals has expanded into the thousands catering for individual artists, curators, col lectives, gal leries,

museums, educational centers etc. and has become as we believe the largest onl ine Irish platform for

Contemporary Art, with our website recording an average of over 30 mil l ion hits last year, so Thank You.

In the past month, we have launched the ARTStap FRANCHISE, so check this out! The Franchise Programme has

been set up as a media partnership programme to promote and bring to the world your event, exhibition, symposium

etc. We offer a number of packages designed to cater for Production Companies, Galleries & Museums,

Educational Centers & Universites to the Individual Artist and Curator. Our packages are set up to make your

projects as successful as they can be.

Coming up is the first issue under the new name ARTStap but it is continuing the volume series, so this issue is

ARTStap Vol.2 Issue 2 and what an amazing issue it is. We would l ike to thank all contributors and congratulate al l

ARTStap Award Recipients, and hope this issue lives up to and betters the previous successes of studentsZINE.

Regards

Richard Carr

WWW.ARTSTAP.COM

WHERE THE ART WORLD MEETS ITSELF

Exploring the Critical "I "

commissioned by the Static Gallery in Liverpool for the Static

Pamphlet. Available on-line on www.static.org. Published by the

Static Gallery in an anthology on arts criticism Us and Them, editor

Becky Shaw and Gareth Woollam, 2005, ISBN 0-9546498-1-8

Salome Voegelin

Sit yourself down comfortably, staring ahead of you, looking at nothing in

particular and repeat ten times in slow succession: Why am I I?

The usual effect of this experiment is a sharp certainty about the l imits of

your body and mind, and a strong sense that you exist. Most l ikely some

acquaintances of yours and even people you only met in passing wil l flash

before your minds eye and you are suddenly very clear about the fact that

you are not them. Maybe you start to wonder what it would be like to be

them, how they are feeling, what they are thinking, etc. . In any event you

realise with startl ing clarity that you have always been you, and that you

can only ever be yourself. This is accompanied by a stark sense of

incredulity that one should exist as one does. (Why me?) Subsequently

you might be overcome by a strange sensation of being trapped, or you

might experience an immense sense of joy. Either way, you perceive an

intense focus on yourself and all relationships to people and things around

you appear quite fragile and distant, impossible to draw them closer,

however much you squint.

I see a barrel rolling down the hill into a ditch, a male figure gets out, I see

him from the back running, disappearing behind the corner at the foot of

the bridge. Then my glance becomes his. His arms extend out in front of

me his voice is between my ears. Having just escaped from prison he is

on the run and I am running with him. I am caught in his body. His eyes

are my picture frame. Struggling with bushes and the steep terrain we run

onto the main road. We stop a car and hitch a lift negotiating the driver of

the car as a you vis--vis our shared I . This intimacy is dizzying,

every time he turns his head I turn as well, I am caught as in a vice,

unable to look back, unable to choose my own image. His monologues

are our dialogues, are him as me.

The man is Vincent Parry. His character guides the camera around Delmer

Daves fi lm Dark Passage. The clumsy sharp edges of the camera trap the

eyes of the viewer in the body of the character. He/I is/am invisible to

him/myself whilst clearly always at the centre of the action. I t is claustrophobic

in these eyes, there does not seem enough space to breath and I would l ike to

turn around to look at myself, to gauge myself from without myself. However,

the director insists, and every look at myself is a look from within myself which

gets caught in the incredulity of a singular existence.

From this point on there is no us but only a them and even this them is quite

clearly heterogeneous beyond categorical descriptions. Every them is an I

as I , and communication becomes a matter of desire, the wil l ingness to collude

momentari ly in a collective sense with no expectations to hold on to it as

meaning.

By the time Vincent Parry has visited a plastic surgeon and become Allan

Lanelle I know that there is no other place to view the fi lm from but myself.

And although he is turning around to me now, facing me and becoming a

you to my I , I know that I am the centre of the fi lm I am viewing. The

fi lm is produced in my contingent complicity. My spectatorship is that of a

transitive viewer, my engagement narrates the material . I see as Roland

Barthes crivant writes: urgently and individual ly, producing the fi lm in my

temporary perception rather than reading it from a distanced position

through the channels of fi lmic orthodoxies and conventions.(1 )

For the viewer as spectatant (spectating) the fi lm is an individual and

subjective expression, provisional but not ambiguous. I t is rendered

unambiguous due to the particularity of my subjectivity. Ambiguity arises in

the general ity of (fi lm) language, not in the particularity of the action of

seeing. By contrast, for the spectator the fi lm is a text, monumental, and

thus invites and confirms consensual interpretations and objective

criticism. I understand this not as a paradox. Rather, if you understand the

work from a meta-position, confirmed beyond its current perception in a

shared reading, you can accept subjective interpretations and ambiguous

readings without them destroying the underlying authority of its institutional

language, and thus without interpretative ambiguity destroying the

authority of the consensual voice. For the transitive viewer this is different.

The authority of my perception l ies in my individual and momentary

conviction. The work is produced in my viewing of it, and my interpretation

becomes the fi lm as a generative action. Thus the sense of the fi lm lies in

the conviction of my interpretative production rather than in the relation to

presumed conventions of contextual isation and its orthodoxies of valuation.

Such an urgent and individual perception seems to be forever in confl ict with

conventions of viewing and cultural inertia and thus challenges any notion of

us and them sustained beyond the moment of perception. The transitive

Barthes disregards ontological values and his individual fervour and

engagement leads continuously to a particular subjectivity: an I as I

experience it in the sharp intensity of being only ever in the moment myself. My

I is radical ly me, any affi l iation in an us or a them is only my desire to stop

the dizzying intensity of looking from within and survey the frame from a

detached position, outside the work. My need to escape the intense involvement

makes me negotiate a consensual sense.

What makes Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart) trust Irene Jansen (Lauren

Bacall), is his desire to connect, the wil l to overcome the intensity of the I in a

momentary us . He needs this al l iance to get himself out of his difficulties as an

escaped convict on the run. (He was put away three years earl ier for al legedly

ki l l ing his wife.) Everybody else seems a hosti le and suspicious them to him.

Theoretical conventions and descriptions are attempts at consolidating the I

into an us beyond such individual desire. Conventions and orthodoxies,

contracts of viewing and listening, determine my perception within a

consensuality. However, there is no us and them, only Is with the

occasional wil l to belong together as us and identify some thems to hold the

tautological truths established in a contractual description against. In this sense

the desire to form such momentary affi l iations is by no means always

benevolent. The notion of an us and a them manipulates the I into a vice,

into positions and agreements, and not every I that pushes for an us

or a them equals another. Even if the terms us and them pretend

equivalent belonging, the real ity of this affi l iation depends on the who of

its experience rather than the category of its description.

Vincent soon finds out that us is an il lusion, and them the frightening

concept of betrayal.

I f taken to be more than a momentary affi l iation us and them lead to

the terror of categorisation, of homogeneous total ities even if hidden

behind heterogeneous differentiations. Instead reality is generated in the

dynamic intersections of individual and momentary conceptions. The

collective sense is produced continual ly in the dynamic relationships

between the individual subjects conceptual ising the fi lm in their perception

as transitive Is , rather than in relation to a pre-existent determination.

The consequence for Vincent or Allan, is exile and a shaky us of love

and desire with Irene. Most thems , hosti le or friendly, have inadvertedly

been kil led along the way.

The consequence for the viewer is a fragile and provisional sense of

conviction in his/her own generative interpretation. I can aim to share my

individual narrativisation of the material with you, bearing in mind that any

such connection is only ever temporary and dependent on the wil l ingness

to engage rather than facil itated by a contract of engagement. Thus it is

fraught from the start and all that keeps me from abandoning this affi l iation

is the hope for a shared sensation and a momentary rel ief in col lectivity that

explains my being me beyond the intense feeling I get staring ahead of myself

thinking why am I I?

Notes

1 . In his text crivain et crivant (1 960) Barthes debates two different forms of

writing. Lcrivain is the person who writes, for the term crivain is a noun. He

is an author who uses and produces the institutional monopoly over language.

He presents a l iterary tradition, institutions and conventions of writing and

reading: l iterature and the collective sense of good writing. By contrast,

l crivant is a different voice of action. The -ant denotes the present participle,

thus the crivant is writing; he produces the work continual ly from his

vernacular position and his urgent individual ity generates his expression.

According to Barthes it is the task of the crivant to state without hesitation

what he thinks; and in this urgency and subjectivity l ies his critical ity. At the

same time, the function of the crivain and his l iterary language is to transform

such critical production into a commodity, to make it writable in a conventional,

shareable sense.

Selected Bibliography

Barthes, Roland, crivains et crivants, in Essais Critiques, (ditions Du Seuil: Paris, 1964, [orig. 1960])

Lyotard, Jean-Franois, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by Geoff

Bennington and Brian Massumi, (Manchester University Press: UK, 1994, [orig.1979])

Massey, Doreen, Power-geometry and a Progressive Sense ofPlace, in Mapping the Futures, local

cultures, global change, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner eds,

(Routledge: London, 1996, [orig. 1993])

HENRY SAMELSON

Interviewed by Valerie Brennan ofStudio Critical

Thursday, Apri l 5, 201 2

A behind the scenes approach to contemporary painting

www.http://studiocritical.blogspot. ie/

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I 'm working on about 50 small paintings simultaneously right now. I 'm starting or

revisiting--depending on how you look at it--some very small paintings on canvas.

I wanted to start some new work after reaching a stopping point with a recent

series, but looking around the studio realized I have a glut of old work that I am

not real ly close to anymore. So I 'm recycling.

Can you describe your working routine?

I have a day job, and my wife and I have a 22 month old boy, so there's a lot of

time-management and scheduling involved in my routine which basical ly involves

working around job and family 2-3 nights during the week in the studio, and one

day over the weekend. I do a lot of sketching with ink, crayon, pencil every day

whenever there's a gap in my schedule. So, along these lines, before going to my

job I 've gotten into the routine/ritual of sketching in the park beforehand. I sketch

later on my lunch. And at night after work if I can't make it to the studio, I work on

some watercolor and pencil drawings on the couch, or drawings on my iPad or

phone.

Henry Samelson is a painter, born 1962, lives and

works in Brooklyn NY. Recent exhibitions include two

Solo Exhibitions at the Horton Gallery NY2007 /

2008.

Puck, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9", 2012

Studio view

Pencil sketch of the Taco Bell parking lot across from my studio

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your

work?

I have a studio in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn which has a nice view of

midtown Manhattan in the distance and a Taco Bell in the foreground. I share it

with another artist who I have only seen once in al l the months I 've been there, so

it's almost l ike having my own space which is important for me as I don't work

well with someone else in the room. The space itself has a certain bearing on my

work that I haven't figured out yet. I 've worked in a tiny spare bedroom in a former

apartment on some very large-scaled canvases. I think that working in that

cramped space on such large paintings makes it hard to see the space inside the

painting and maybe that's a good thing, to work somewhat bl indly that way.

Conversely, I have a lot of working space right now but am working on small-

scaled works that I tend to stand very far back from to look at when I 'm just

looking. So in a way I 'm just as blind about the space painting those. I work best

when I have a nice view outside, and maybe thats a lonesomeness thing.

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I ts hard to pinpoint where things begin and evolve with me. Drawing is important

to my painting. But there is reciprocity between them with ideas/influence flowing

back and forth. I work on a lot of paintings at the same time with dialogue

between them as well . Everything plays off of everything else. Sometimes when I

stumble in a good idea I have to go back and work over what I thought was a

good idea in something I felt satisfied with a week or year ago. Like many other

artists, I 'd say drawings help me locate ideas, marks, color, for the paintings.

When I turn to painting, however, it's hard to stay true 1 00% of the time to

the template I thought a series of drawings had established. Departures

happen as a result of accident, frustration, ineptitude, and the difficulty of

translating the muscle movements involved in drawing into the act of

painting. I think the circumstances I have just described are common

among artists who move from drawing to painting. Drawing feels more

acoustic and discipl ined than painting. In painting, I get a lot of feedback

that can't be control led. I always reach a point of anger and disgust in a

work which I think is an essential part of my process.

Acrylic on canvas paintings in progress, 2012, 10"x10"

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

Everything. But I dont think of this as trouble really. I don't think of any of my

work as being resolved. I mean I do, in moments, but there are so many ways

to finish something, resolved doesnt seem like the clearest way to describe

how I look at a work I 've stopped working on. Maybe there's some word in a

dead language that means essential ly "the work has just stopped, sort of".

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work

within certain parameters?

I basical ly paint and draw using mostly the usual media and supports

associated with those forms. I do a good bit of spray painting and digital

drawing, if that counts as different. I 've made paintings on aluminum that I hired

an auto body shop to finish. But I sti l l think I 've remained true to a fairly narrow

band of working, even though many of my art heroes do some pretty wacky

stuff with varied materials. I just haven't gone there yet.

What does the future hold for this work?

Things that are related to question number 6. I d l ike to explore different

materials, different approaches to support/presentation, avoid squares.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I real ly appreciate this invitation to discuss my work and process Valerie.

Thank you. I am sure I would answer these questions differently in time,

maybe even by the time I get home from work tonight. In fact, I am sure

after I send you these answers I am going to wish I had answered

everything another way.

Top Arts Spaces & Galleries to join ARTStap Online

Oonagh Young Gallery

CFCP

SOMA

TACTIC

NSF

The Secret Kitchen

Platform Ireland

Little Green Street Gallery

OPEN SUBMISSION AWARD

WWW.ARTSTAP.COM

OL

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Olga was born and brought up in Poland where she also graduated in 2004 in sculpture and art teaching, and

thereupon established a studio with a l ittle foundry. In 2005 she was chosen as a final ist of Warmia and Mazury Art

Biennale.

Having moved to Ireland in 2006, Olga been carrying out a set of researches and experiments in a kind of kitchen

laboratory which resulted in being shortl isted for the latest Celeste Prize in New York. Although being a niche artist,

Olga has presented her work worldwide, mainly contributing to group exhibitions.

I perceive art as a phenomenon which is not limited to professiona interest. It is a way of life, and thus I always create

a piece related to the situation that I participate in; current and touching. Although aesthetic is still important in my

works, I give priority to thought or feeling existing behind a concept. Therefore, playing with reality by drawing

parallels to art matters is my never-ending pleasure

The idea of cocoons that I am devoted to explore, stems from motherhood and other feminine qualities. When I was a

child all around was magical and undefined. Women ofmy childhood were always busy with crafty works, especially a

grandma who was a tailor. She passed her skills to 3 daughters, so I am used to having scraps ofmaterials popped in

corners of a house, and also colorful threads and buttons laying everywhere. Women in my family came easily from

stirring meal to sewing, knitting, embroidering, composing flowers and so on. The work was left at their fingertips

waiting to go on with it. Accordingly, since I have become a mother this reminiscence strongly influences my art

practice .

The process of creation is aimed to act regarding old craftsmanship, in particular house-holding works carried by

woman in the old days. Therefore, my work has a potent social value. Conceptual exploration of textile sculptures

implements a series of installations possible to compose in countless places so that the relationship between one who

is locked at home and public space can be depicted. Likewise, such a visual stimulus incites mutual interaction

between the two worlds which fascinates me the most.

Semi-circle by Olga Anacka

Nest by Olga Anacka

Pinky promise by Olga Anacka

Upholstry by Olga Anacka

Maria Coleman Recipient of the ARTStap TITLE Award

Reappraising the Disappearing Body and the

Disembodied Eye through Multisensory Art

School of Art, Design and Printing Dublin Institute of Technology Ireland

Abstract

This paper examines the mind/body dualism inherent in

western culture, tracing some causes and consequences of

the disappearing body. It considers the complicity of the

disembodied eye in privileging the intellect over

corporeality and proposes the more holistic approach of

interactive and installation art as an antidote to this age-old

mind/body split.

The Disappearing Body

The evolution of mental history in Western culture

describes the displacement by reason and logic of the body

as an instrument ofknowledge. Bill Viola [26, p.234]

The body is a contested site where many of our cultural

discourses are played out. Stephen Wilson [32, p.149]

The forebears of western thought trusted their minds and

doubted their bodies. Plato's al legory of the cave, written in the

fourth century BCE, teaches that the realm of the senses is

arbitrary, amounting to l ittle beyond shadow play. Sensual

pleasures were recognised as leaden weights that dragged the

vision of one's soul downward.

The Judeo-Christian story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve

from the Garden of Eden also portrays how the intel lect was

raised above the body in the collective imagination. In this story,

the cumbersome fruits of knowledge brought a burden of

disrepute and shame to the body. I t was henceforth to be

civi l ised, covered, dominated and control led by the intel lect. The

bad reputation meted out to the body goes deeper than the

necessity for fig leaves. Corporeality is further downtrodden

behind layers of metaphor in the story. The treatment of the

woman and the snake in fact compounds the misgivings about

the body. As the female is presumably the more body-bound sex

due to her bearing role in reproduction, Eve's temptation

translates perhaps to the lure of bodily senses. In countless

primitive cultures, the snake is a powerful symbol of l ife, sex,

birth, death and rebirth. Our bodies connect us to al l of the

characteristics assigned to the snake: they define our sexuality,

al low us to join the reproductive cycle and serve as our agent of

l ife, growth, renewal and mortal ity. When the snake was cast

down to crawl in the dirt, symbolical ly our sensual bodies were

too.

Centuries of Christian dogma built upon this mythological

foundation to transform the idea of humanity l iving in

harmony in a physical earthly paradise into a vision of an

otherworldly utopia, or heaven, where ethereal souls were

loosed from their body-bound existence to dwell in eternal

bl iss. The conquered physical body of Christian thought

was compounded again centuries later by Descartes's

maxim Cogito ergo sum I think, therefore I am. In an

attempt to distance himself from the mortal coil of the

senses (Am I so dependent on the body and the senses

that without these I cannot exist? [6, p.225]), Descartes

imagined his sentient soul existing independently of his

corporeality. I think was far superior to his seventeenth-

century mind than the ambiguity of I feel. The sensual

body was definitely not the chosen gauge of fact. Trusting

intel lect, science set about dissecting and cataloguing

existence into discrete elements. This set western culture

apart and allowed people to govern the natural

environmentand develop increasingly abstract thoughts

and tools. This mind/body split has been a useful

abstraction and has brought us to a unique, technological ly

advanced moment in history, but it also fosters dangerous

delusions.

In the book Mind Children, roboticist Hans Moravec argues

that protein-based life forms wil l be replaced by sil icon in

the future.

He loosely adapts Moore's law of exponential ly growing

computing capabil ities to predict that the next twenty years wil l

see the development of robots with intel l igence far superior to

humanity's. His prophesies continue that robots wil l inherit the

earth, and that our only avenue for survival wil l be to download

our consciousness into the system, making it effectively

immortal, transferring to new machines as required. An immense

simulator would then recreate our complex reality. Moravec

describes this as fol lows:

Now, imagine an immense simulator that is able to

model the whole surface of the earth on an atomic scale,

and that can run time forward and back, and produce

different plausible outcomes by making different random

choices at key points in its calculation. Because of the

great detai l this simulator models l iving things, including

humans, in their ful l complexity. [21 ]

Marvin Minsky, a prominent figure in artificial intel l igence

research, hopes to decode and synthesise the brain, al lowing a

digital form of the brain to survive in more durable material after

the death of the bloody mess of organic matter (qtd. [30, p.1 7]).

The philosophy of these neognostics can be discerned in the

work of many fields. The artist Stelarc believes that humanity's

propensity for knowledge accumulation has superseded the

significance of physical ity.

[T]he body has become profoundly obsolete in the

intense information environment it has created. I t's

had this mad, Aristotel ian urge to accumulate more

and more information. An individual now cannot

hope to absorb and creatively process all this

information. Humans have created technologies

and machines which are much more precise and

powerful than the body. [24]

Wil l iam Gibson, who coined the phrase cyberspace, writes

in his novel Neuroromancer of networked computers that

enable a matrix of pure data with bright lattices of logic

unfolding across the colorless void [7, p.1 1 ]. This realm of

data gl istens with the particular kind of beauty only found in

the harmony and eloquence of a mathematical equation.

His male protagonist Case, who feels trapped by his body

(he refers to it as meat), jacks into this matrix to enjoy the

bodiless exultation of cyberspace [7, p.1 2]. Interestingly, he

does not lose the joys of bodily consummating his

relationship with the heroine Linda Lee, fulfi l l ing Stephen

Whittaker's definition of a cybernaut as someone who

desires embodiment and disembodiment in the same

instant. His ideal machine would address itself to his

senses, yet free him from his body. His is a vision which

loves sensorial possibi l ity while hating bodily l imits [31 ]

(qtd. [30, p.258]).

Gibson's Case ascends to the l ight of cyberspace at the close

of the novel, when a data version of him is fed into the matrix to

l ive forever, a point from which it is clear that these anti-body

sentiments superimpose neatly upon the Christian ideal of

heaven, where the soul final ly leaves the body to independently

ascend to eternal happiness.

[I ]n our time of social and environmental disintegration

[\] today's proselytizers of cyberspace proffer their

domain as an idealized realm above and beyond the

problems of a troubled material world. Just l ike the early

Christians, they promise a transcendent haven a

utopian arena of equality, friendship and power.

Cyberspace is not a rel igious construct per se, but [\]

one way of understanding this new digital domain is as

an attempt to construct a technological substitute for the

Christian space of Heaven. [30, p.1 6]

Michael Heim tel ls us that cyberspace is essential ly unintel l igible

and inscrutable (even to experts) and acknowledges that these

attributes were formerly attributed to God [1 2, p.1 60]. I ts

unintel l igibi l i ty l ies in the fact that the computers required to run

the colossal switching stations at the heart of the

telecommunications network are so complex that artificial ly

intel l igent subroutines have to design the chips and software

that run them.

The computers in effect design themselves, so in theory the

network is infinite. However, despite their infinity, these

networks would not grow back autonomously were they

shut down. They are inanimate and unconscious, much like

the floating sardine can pointed out by the fisherman in

Lacan's anecdote: You see the can? Do you see it? Well it

doesn't see you! [1 6, p.95].

The views of Moravec, Minsky, et al. are extreme and

arguably of l imited consequence, but understated anti-body

tendencies can affect our daily l ives and lead us towards a

denial of physical ity, particularly in an era when

technologies increasingly augment our l ived experience.

The necessity to be deskbound when interacting with

computers (the portals to cyberspace) is a subtle extension

of this predisposition, as is the stationary compulsion

enforced on us by the cinema. Both phenomena are strong

forces that divide us internal ly and from each other and the

world around us.

When judging user interfaces, our usual standard

of goodness is the efficiency with which one can

progress from point A to point B using the

application. At some point we must recognize that

our l ives are spent in between. [\] [T]he quality of

the experience provided by the computer interface

has bearing on the quality of l ife itself. [1 4, p.422]

The phrase our l ives are spent in between rings deeply true in

our accelerated culture. Planes, trains, automobiles and the

Internet al l strive to cut out distance and make our l ives more

efficient; it remains that in the time in between we are likely to be

tapping keystrokes or sitting motionless, transfixed to moving

images. Philosopher Paul Viri l io bel ieves we are victims of our

own accelerated culture. He refers to the cultural effects of

speed as speed pollution, which reduces the world to nothing

[27]. Technologies l ike the Internet and media of i l lusion l ike

virtual real ity (VR), which was initial ly developed for mil itary

purposes, are underpinned by an association with mil itary

precision and speed. Aby Warburg, writing in the 1 920s, also felt

speed was destroying the universe:

Telegrams and telephones destroy the cosmos. Mythical

and symbolic reflection creates space for meditation or

thought in the struggle for spiritual l inks between man

and his environment, but this is murdered by split-

second electrical connections. [29] (qtd. [8, p.227])

Performance artist Marina Abramovic agrees:

We use telephones instead of telepathy. With al l the

progress, we exchange computers for our sensitivity. We

don't use our intuition or our creativity at al l . Even if we

have free time we switch on our television and wil l just

be hypnotized by the programmes. [1 , p.209]

Despite al l the progress in media and industry, our physical

bodies, our primary resource, evolve at a much slower rate.

Speed has managed, however, to change our bodies: diets

have been revolutionised by the transport of goods and the

increased demand for convenience food. All the choice and

convenience comes at the high price of refined, artificial ly

preserved foods, which are not optimal nutrition for our

bodies, and perhaps even detrimental to health. Abramovic

met an old man on a train one day who had worked in a

crematorium. He left her with this anecdote: You know,

forty years ago the temperature required to cremate the

human body was 1 25 degrees [Celsius]. These days it is

71 5 degrees because the chemicals in our body have

increased [1 , pp.207-208].

The Disembodied Eye

The Cartesian dualism that abstractly divided the human

entity into the discrete elements of body and mind was

complicated further by a collective focus on another of our

faculties. Our over-rel iance on eyesight has been complicit

in the anti-body tendencies thus far outl ined. The tendency

towards a dominantly ocular understanding of the world is

longstanding. Marshall McLuhan attributes this to the

advent of written language, which substituted an eye for an

ear [20, p.94], giving previously oral information a visual

and recordable form.

This sea change towards assimilating worldly information

primari ly through eyesight soon saw the development of visual

i l lusionary devices such as foreshortening and rudimentary

perspective in the visual art of antiquity, devices famously

revisited and refined during the Renaissance.

The development of perspective in the Renaissance was

not just a technical innovation, it instantiated cultural

themes such as the importance of sight, the privi leging

of particular points of view, the disregard of the other

senses, and a faith in the abil ity to organise and

dominate space. The power of contemporary media and

representation derive from this dominance. [32, p.261 ]

The very fabric of our artistic tradition is woven from the threads

of this ocular dependence, from painting to cinema, television

and now the burgeoning field of virtual real ity. Perspective

encoded a particular viewpoint, initial ly acknowledging the

physical position of the viewer. Eventual ly however, artists l ike

Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea Mantegna began to play with this

device, putting obscure centers of projection that were not

physical ly attainable into their works. The vanishing point in

Leonardo's Last Supper, for example, needs to be viewed from

fifteen feet above the floor to be aligned to the viewer's body.

Perceptual psychologist Michael Kubovy explains: These

effects achieve the goal of divorcing the viewer's felt point of

view in relation to the scene represented in the painting, from

the viewer's felt position in relation to the room in which he or

she is standing [1 5, p.1 59].

Kubovy understands this as a kind of mind game that

al lows one to develop a virtual eye that can leave the

physical body through a fl ight of imagination to view from

the physical ly unattainable point of entry. Further to its

capacity to virtual ly extend our sensorial faci l ities he also

attributes this roaming virtual eye with the impressive abil ity

to induce a feeling of spiritual ity, perhaps one conducive to

a rel igious experience: a separation of the mind's eye from

the bodily eye [1 5, p.1 59]. Painted in such a light, the

subtle act of mental adjustment described as the

disembodied eye can be understood as complicit with the

aforementioned tendencies towards a disappearing body.

This virtual eye, a potent cocktai l of visual understanding

and cognitive fl ight of fancy, quickly enabled humankind to

think outside of its l imits and distance itself from its

corporeal gravity. With the magical wings of this virtual eye,

western imagination set fl ight. Gali leo employed it to make

the monumental leap of decoding visual information from

the heavenly bodies and realising the true spherical form of

the earth and its cyclical orbit around the sun. Perspective

was not, as is so often and wrongly held, developed in

order to reference the physical environment, but to produce

space for contemplation, meditation and fantasy [4, p.78].

Here perhaps, l ies one of the deeply grounded reasons

why westerners understand themselves to be a divided

mind/body. The disembodied eye and mind have afforded

thought processes not previously attainable and set us free on a

metaphysical realm.

The cinematic camera, l ike the high Renaissance painters, toys

with viewpoints. Initial ly true to physical ly attainable frames (so

physical ly probable in fact, that the first viewers of one Lumire

fi lm ran away as a train was apparently coming straight for

them), fi lmmakers l ike D. W. Griffith (The Birth of a Nation)

eventual ly used the camera as a mechanical disembodied eye

that panned, cut and focused to tai lor attention.

[T]he relations of self, world and medium are

reconfigured. Their interactio converges [\] in the eye,

which to take on this role as mediator, must leave the

dog-eared bounds of sensual real ity. [\] The pulse of

disembodiment and recorporealization is the flutter

captured so well in cinematic suturing of the gaze from

shot to shot. [4, p.32]

Offered unlimited travel in the vehicle of the mind's eye, and

using the skil l acquired since the inception of perspective, the

viewer registers the physical ly improbable viewpoint, and

fantasises to compensate. As the fl ickering flame of the campfire

mesmerised our ancestors, so we continue to be fascinated* by

the glimmering l ight of the silver screen and we continue to lose

ourselves to the dream. This stationary, private escapology

obliterates the individual abil ities of the audience, rendering

them inactive, non-interactive and submissive.

The old cinema removes experience, making us

see things along with (or through) a protagonist

with whom we identify, and a plot in which we are

caught. Such an approach tends toward not only a

lack of viewpoint, of definition of whose experience

it is, but also fi lters the power of sight into mere

habit, dissolves insight into vicariousness. The

spectator is reduced to a voyeur which is,

increasingly, the individual 's role in society at large.

[1 3] (qtd. [33, p.61 ])

Ken Kelman, quoted above, understands the cinema

viewer to be reduced to a voyeur. Invisible and non-

existent, fixing a predatory gaze on her object of desire, the

voyeur is gratified, her yearning not exposed by actions.

Kelman links this condition to an atmosphere of social

detachment. This potential ly damning indictment of the

phenomenon of the disembodied eye is compounded by

Gene Youngblood's assertion that the lack of participation

promoted by ocular rel iance leads to a stagnant

environment for the growth of ideas and learning. I f the

information is redundant, as it must be in commercial

entertainment, nothing is learned and change becomes

unlikely [33, p.65]. Participation in the cinema is on the

subtle level of empathising with the characters. I ts structure

is pre-recorded, and consequently closed, al lowing no

response, be that vocalisation, applause or action.

The negative implications for the the disembodied eye are

clear. Despite the fact that this virtual construct is precariously

divorced from its sensual home, it has nonetheless been

instrumental in raising sight to a dominant cultural position, as

the mediator of psychological experience and the arbiter of

understanding, objectivity and truth.

In most languages of most cultures throughout history,

seeing has been equated with understanding. The entire

Indo-European linguistic system is fi l led with examples: I

see, ya vizhu, je vois. Yet nearly twenty-four hundred

years ago Plato asserted, The world of our sight is l ike

the habitation in prison. Recent studies in anatomy,

physiology, and anthropology have lead to a similar

conclusion. We have come to see that we don't real ly

see, that real ity is more within than without. The

objective and the subjective are one. [33, p. 46]

I f seeing equates with understanding, then sensing by inference

is a somehow clouded judgment. We tend to subjugate our

intuition in favour of rational ity, imagining an objective and

truthful stance to exist despite the fact that each person is

contained within his or her subjective body. Indeed, cognitive

science and neuroscience teach us that the much-contested split

cannot in actual ity exist [1 7]. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

contend that reason is a by-product of our physical makeup and

is profoundly shaped by corporeality.

There is no such ful ly autonomous faculty of reason

separate from and independent of bodily capacities

such as perception and movement. The evidence

supports, instead, an evolutionary view, in which

reason uses and grows out of such bodily

capacities. [\] Our sense of what is real begins

with and depends crucial ly upon our bodies [\].

[1 7, p.1 7]

The particular characteristics of our bodies define how we

conceptualise and organise information about the world.

The categories into which we group phenomena are l imited

to the number of neurons available to carry sensory

information, and the colours we perceive depend in part on

receptors in our eyes. In short, we assimilate the outer

world through our bodies, and our bodies colour our view.

For real human beings, the only realism is an embodied

realism [1 7, p.26]. Therefore, the dualisms that have

defined us for centuries are arbitrary at best, and

dangerous and delusional at worst. The twofold distinctions

attribute positive traits l ike intel l igence, objectivity and

clarity to one pole, and labour, subjectivity and disorder to

the other.

Putting the body back into the picture requires a

mode of analysis that can complicate and unravel

the simple dualisms that underl ie its erasure, while

sti l l acknowledging the force and efficacy of these

dualisms in creating cultural constructions. [1 0, p.6]

Perhaps this vigorous distinction was developed as a means to

distance one's mind from mortal ity henceforth pinned solely on

the body, with the mind striving to overcome finitude through

achievements recorded by posterity. I f so, our haste to

disassociate ourselves from mortal ity removed our sense of

wholeness. By distrusting bodily truths and intuition, we divided

ourselves internal ly and splintered our wider relationship with

nature. Bil l Viola sees this as our major cultural malaise:

The larger struggle we are witnessing today is not

between confl icting rel igious moral bel iefs, between the

legal system and individual freedom, or between nature

and human technology; it is between our inner and outer

l ives, and our bodies are the area where this is being

played out. I t is the old philosophical mind/body problem

coming to a crescendo as an ecological drama, where

the outcome rests not only on the realization that the

natural physical environment is one and the same as our

bodies, but that nature itself is a form of mind. [26,

p.236]

The Re-Emerging Body in Multisensory Art

I f art and media are cultural barometers, they should reflect

and address these issues. Morton Heil ig, the inventor and

theorist, saw art's role as one of emotional expression, with

the aim of increased sympathetic communication. Writing in

the fifties, he saw that art had a long way to go to achieve

its goals, and that society at large badly needed its

transformative input. He advocated that it address its

audience holistical ly, communicating its message to all

senses possible. His idea was to break the hegemony of

the steri le dissection of human faculties, al lowing more than

just eyesight and psychological engagement. In his 1 955

essay The Cinema of the Future, Heil ig outl ined his vision

for the potential improvements of the medium, based on

insights into the nature of human perception that would

transform it into a polysensory experience. For al l the

apparent variety of the art forms created, there is one

thread uniting al l of them. And that is man, with his

particular organs of perception and action [1 1 , p.243]. His

methodology of art advocated that artists should be famil iar

with the workings of these organs of perception, intimately

understanding the psychology and physiology involved.

We can now state the third law of our methodology of

art: The brain of man shifts rapidly from element to

element within each sense, and from sense to sense

in the approximate proportion of sight 70%, hearing

20%, smell 5%, touch 4%, and taste 1%, selecting one

impression at a time according to the needs of [the]

individual [. . . ] . These unite into the dynamic stream of

sensations we call consciousness. The cinema of the

future wil l be the first direct, complete and conscious

application of this law. [1 1 , p.248]

Unlike today's cinema, which isolates a few senses, thus

restricting our experience, his vision was for something

altogether more subtle and real. As he candidly put it: I f man

can have intimate moments in l ife with his peripheral vision,

stereophonic hearing, smell , and touch, so can his art [1 1 ,

p.250]. He foresaw that once one hundred per cent of the field of

view was addressed, as well as the other senses in varying

degrees, the biggest concern of the artist would no longer be

narrative, but how to lead attention, for individuals would focus

on different information according to their particular interests.

The viewer then must shake him/herself out of the lazy habits of

the current formula, and work to search for meaning in the

production. They wil l find that their inner truths are the ideal

impetus for this endeavour.

Realism, or, in aesthetic terms, experience, is

that something which is created by the unity of the

outer world with the inner. No matter how extensive

the artist's means, he must use them to provoke

more of the spectator's participation, not less. For

without the active participation of the spectator

there can be no transfer of consciousness, no art.

[1 1 , p.247, emphasis in original]

Heil ig's work puts forth striking developments on Richard

Wagner's theory of Gesamtkunstwerk. Though Heil ig

focuses more on the senses, Wagner's focus on an

interdiscipl inary art has the same thrust. Both agree that

the human body is the primary artistic material . Heil ig saw

that the preverbal stories of primitive humans (recounting

perhaps an incident with an animal) were the first inkl ings

of art, which rel ied purely on bodily gestures to transmit

important knowledge. Wagner, too, felt that the future lay

with actual bodily humanity with al l its vital ity in the form of

the actor who would reunite the disparate threads of art in

bodily portrayal with al l its wealth of movement [28, p.7].

An important step towards the readmittance of the

multisensory and participatory body came with the Dada art

movement, born in the furnace of World War I Europe. I ts

goal, according to Dada artist Hans Richter, was to bring

forward a new kind of human being [22, p.65]. This aim

was to be realised through a mixing of consciousness and

unconsciousness, chance and purpose.

The official bel ief in the infal l ibi l i ty of reason, logic and

causality seemed to us senseless as senseless as the

destruction of the world and the systematic el imination

of every particle of human feeling. This is the reason

why we were forced to look for something which would

re-establish our humanity. [22, p.58]

Chance and the underlying synchronicity it al lows permit genuine

experience to be an art material , which, Dadaists believed

brought them closer to the source of al l art, the voice within

ourselves [22, p.50]. The performance art of the sixties picked

up this mantle and attempted to deal with l ife in the round. An

art practice was developed that was more eventbased,

temporary, body-centered and collaborative. Formerly disparate

art forms intermingled, and the audience was invited into a more

active role. Everyday mundane actions were celebrated with a

new piety, and conceptual boundaries dissolved, paving the way

for a total art, with the body and psyche of the artist as the

primary material . In the work of artists such as Marina

Abramovic, Vito Acconci and Daniel Burren, the human as

integrated mind/body re-emerged with primeval potency, placing

our corporeal selves before us in a l ive, striving, shamanic,

performative sense.

Today's instal lation art, which increasingly involves a technology-

enabled interactive element, also carries hopes for a

multisensory art that celebrates an integrated mind/body.

I t is a plural zone that marries visual art, sound, theatre and

cinema into an inclusive art that envelops the entire human

sensorium. MoMA curator Robert Storr describes

instal lations as complete immersion environments,

asserting that once the proscenium arch had been

removed, the division between actors and audience

became blurred [25]. The instal lation artist is in effect

setting the stage for discourse between the viewer and

artwork, providing unexpected scenarios where our visual

and intel lectual routines are confronted or disturbed, and

we are entreated to engage with, or act upon, the new

stage. Nicholas de Oliveira attests that instal lations must

refer to and dismantle the supremacy of cinema as the

foremost place of communal immersion. He writes:

Cinema provides the dominant cultural experience

that instal lation must explore. Fi lm has been

instrumental in setting the viewing conditions and

expectations for today's audiences as it envelops

the spectator in an overwhelming spectacle of

narrative, sound and vision. [5, p.23]

True to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk, works by the American

artist Matthew Barney blend instal lation, theatre and fi lm in a

vague, evocative mix. French artist Pierre Huyghe melds

music, theatre and instal lation in his L'expdition scinti l lante:

A musical (2002).

The work features three 'acts' set on three floors of a building,

which is programmed so that l ight, weather (temperature,

simulated fog, etc.), music and performance fol lows a script. A

physical space that demands corporeal presence to be activated,

the instal lation has an open outlook as to what constitutes an art

material , and so engages the compound character of modern

l ife. As the instal lation continual ly assembles information in

unique combinations, the focus no longer resides on discrete art

objects but rather on the sensations induced.

Experience is mediated through the body; the degree to

which our sensory faculties are stimulated is l inked to

the impact that the experience has on us. [\] The way

we think about space is therefore wholly experiential and

is rel iant on a series of stimuli , which renders our

perception of it much more fluid and transient. [5, pp.49-

50]

Ernesto Neto's instal lation Walking in Venus Blue Cave (2001 )

l iteral ly softens the boundary between the body and the

surrounding architecture. Polyamide material creates a skin-l ike

interface that takes tacti l i ty in hand, while turmeric is used to

give olfactory stimulation. Art critic Ina Blom uses the term

immersive mode to describe this type of experience in which

the subjective awareness [\] appears to merge with the

artwork, so as to create the sensation of a new more powerful

experience of total ity [2] (qtd. [5, p.49]). Visuals no longer have

to be the seat of meaning in such art. Light, fog, smell , texture

and space can be the avenue for dialogue, with the body of

the audience being the essential component.

Marcel Biefer and Beat Zgraggen's God (1 998) creates an

ironic place of worship where the spectators are provided

with a changing room to take off their clothes before

confronting an abstract l ight sculpture: God. Of course the

shared nudity of the audience is the inferred real contact

with the ineffable. Chinese artist Cai Guo-Quaing's, Cultural

Melting Bath (1 997; 1 998) is a rock garden with thirty tons

of rocks from China, arranged around an herbal bath

according to feng shui principles to bestow good qi energy

on the gallery and visitors. Visitors are invited to bathe

communally, and the shared human intimacy is perhaps the

crux of this beneficial energy. Works such as those outl ined

above are addressed directly towards the body and seek to

highl ight its status as a walking sensorium [33, p.363].

Interactive art can potential ly combine sensory experiences

with opportunities for action, fun and descision making.

David Rokeby is a recognised talent in the area. His Very

Nervous System (1 986) tracks the movements of a person

through video tracking in an open space, and these actions

trigger synthesised sounds. Though invisible, the system

transforms a normal outdoor site into a nuanced musical

instrument. He sees these interactive systems as

microcosms in which viewers/participants can become

aware of the reaction to their actions and possibly therefore the

consequences of their behaviour. Much as a sensitive animal

l ike a horse might react in amplified ways to one's presence,

these works acknowledge company, and allow us to practice for

the real world. Rokeby elaborates: By providing us with mirrors,

artificial media, points of view, and automata, interactive

artworks offer us the tools for constructing identities our sense

of ourselves in relation to the artwork and, by implication, in

relation to the world [23, p.1 53]. German media artist Monika

Fleischmann also sees such works as providing a symbolic

exercise:

What is important is to push back the boundaries of

perception and, whenever possible, to cl imb over these.

The Greeks invented theatre to externalize the drama of

l ife l ived at the symbolic level. [\] Interactive theatrical

i l lusion spaces are used for trying out new scenarios.

Reality is treated as if. In the virtual space, we practice

for reality and l ive with a feeling of as if. As if we are

dreaming, as if we are flying, as if we are dying, fal l ing,

sl iding, going into orbit, as if we are existing. (qtd. [32,

pp.734-735])

Technology-enabled interactive art not only offers choice and

fosters participation but also presents opportunities for more

heuristic computer/human interfaces. Crucial ly it seeks to

engage the entire repertoire of human movement.

Though never acknowledged as a sense, the joy of

movement is innate and expressive, and our colonisation

of it, in our checking of our body language and the strict

formulation of movement and contact activities in civi l ised

society, is perhaps an indication of how private and dear we

hold it. Fleischmann states her aim: I want to recover the

senses of the body and to observe the dynamic gesture of

different gender and culture [sic] in interactive media. I f we

don't support digital art and media culture, the quality of l ife

wil l be lost through the dominance of machines (qtd. [32,

p.734]). Michael Heim, a prominent voice on Virtual Reality

acknowledges that technology threatens to further

subjugate our physical ity.

As it stands today, technology rarely acknowledges

the fragile web of energies in the internal human

body. Technology works more like human strip-

mining than like yoga practice. I t pul ls the upper-

body ever further into the tunnel of technology and

offers nothing to restore the resulting imbalance.

[1 2, p.58]

Quite optimistical ly, Heim feels that VR wil l l iberate the

hunchback computer user who is almost fastened to a

monitor, transforming her into a radiant body [1 2, p.57]. I f

Heim is referring to the VR that uses head-mounted

displays and datagloves, it is worth remembering that these

are just one step away from monitors and mice, and actual ly

more intrusive.

One might question how liberated a body can be when tethered

to a device whose initial prototype was nicknamed the Sword of

Damocles because its cumbersome weight threatened to

decapitate its wearer.

Through the subtle use of sensors and tracking devices, it may

be possible to foresee a future when humans are not

extensions of bulky machinery, but rather that the machinery wil l

adapt to humanity. Theorist Sean Cubitt sees partnership

between humanity and technology as the way forward. This

modus operandi would leave neither party dominated or

depleted, and the human would act as the dynamic animating

force. He writes, The digital yearns for the organic with the same

passion with which the text longs for the reader [4, p.35]. New

media artist Brenda Laurel corroborates this view of technology

as irrelevant without the person with her concern that software

development tends to overemphasise what the program can do

instead of what a person can do with the program, despite the

fact that a computer-based representation without a human

participant is l ike the sound of a tree fal l ing in the proverbial

uninhabited forest [1 8, p.2].

Myron Krueger was combining artistic concerns with computer

science as early as 1 970. His projects l ink position- and gesture-

sensing technologies with intel l igent video instal lations that have

networked or AI capabil ities. The audience is general ly

unfettered by body-mounted equipment, since he strives to

subvert this convention.

I have a profound personal prejudice against

wearing devices on any regular basis. I suspect

that I am not alone. Therefore, I bel ieve that human

interface research wil l branch in two directions.

One fork wil l have the objective of completing an

artificial real ity technology that includes force and

tacti le feedback, using whatever intrusive and

encumbering means that are necessary. The other

fork wil l pursue an interface that merges

seamlessly with the rest of our environment. [1 4,

p.420]

Krueger's output general ly travels along the latter fork in

this road. Through subtle sensing technologies, he aims to

engage even computer non-l iterates in immediate, intuitive

ways that urge them to be creative in their interactions.

VIDEOPLACE (1 970) is one such work. In a darkened

room, one sees a live image of one's si lhouette on a

projection screen. Once motion is registered, the system

retorts with graphics, video effects and synthesised sound.

The system includes a number of unique effects: standing

in a central position in the room holding one finger aloft

enables you to draw on the screen, while a spread hand

erases this drawing and a closed fist disables the function.

A horizontal open hand induces an interactive graphic

creature, Critter, who is programmed to climb up the edge

of your shadow and dance if it gets to the top of your head.

I f enclosed by shadows, Critter attempts escape, exploding

and appearing elsewhere if it fai ls. When the system is used with

networked telecommunications, two people in different locations

can interact through their si lhouetted images. Scale disparities

are used to add interest in such a scheme.

The second person can exist on a different scale. Thus,

we have juxtaposed the giant hands of one person and

the shrunken image of another. These hands can lift a

tiny person and suspend him from a graphic string

dangled from a giant finger. Inevitably, the tiny people

wonder if it is possible to swing on the string. Sure

enough, when they move from side to side, imparting

energy to their images, they begin to swing back and

forth. An opportunity has been offered and accepted

without a word being spoken or a manual consulted. [1 4,

p.41 9]

Though the actual visual qualities of this system are rudimentary

by mimetic cinematic standards (Critter for example would not

look out of place in an early video game like Space Invaders) the

symbolic depiction is reinforced by the fluid instinctive nature of

the physical communication. The intel l igent system enables the

surprise of discovery as repertoires of movements announce

their possibi l ities. Corporeal involvement suspends disbelief in

the visual i l lusion, which the viewer after al l real ises is based on

her or his own living form. Krueger has noted that we tend to

have a very strong psychological tie to self-images, reacting to

perceived touch to them.

The artist elaborates: some people reported a sensation in

their finger when they touched the image of another person

[\]. [I ]ndividuals have a very proprietary sense about their

image. What happens to it happens to them. What touches

it, they feel [1 4, p.41 8].

Placing an image derived from the viewer's own body at the

centre of the presentation thus has immense psychological

impact. Reflecting a body's unique shape and dynamic

movement gives that viewer physical empowerment. I t

involves viewers and their choices in the unfolding drama.

Crucial ly this scheme is the polar opposite to the sti l l

compliance required of the cinema watcher. Unlike the

subtle psychological self reflection through identification

with a hero/heroine in a movie presentation, Krueger's

viewers are present individual ly in an immediate way. Here

at last physical engagement rather than cerebral

involvement brings about the transformation and transferal

of consciousness. Though the surface novelty of

VIDEOPLACE might seem at first a frivolous engagement,

when put in context with its unique abil ity to make untutored

users instantly active and to allow creative, physical ly

empowered expression and interpersonal interaction and

play, it points to a future that might, importantly, overcome

the sedentary tyranny of existing systems [1 4, p.420].

Integral to this work's success is the gesture-driven interface that

merges seamlessly with the rest of the environment. I t places

the acquired knowledge of decades of technology at the service

of the embodied user, sensitively adapting to the user's

behaviour rather than requiring user adaptation. Cognitive

science might describe such a designed environment as

external scaffolding, other examples of which might be

infrastructure, customs, languages, organisations, countries,

email networks, etc. , each constructed to aid our modern

existence. This scaffolding in fact al lows us to build simple

actions and thought processes into complex systems. I t might be

attested that this scaffolding is what makes us intel l igent.

[A]dvanced cognition depends crucial ly on our abil ites to

dissipate reasoning: to diffuse achieved knowledge and

practical wisdom through complex social structures, and

to reduce the loads on individual brains by locating

those brains in complex webs of l inguistic, social,

pol itical, and institutional constraints. [\] Our brains

make the world smart so that we can be dumb in peace!

[3, p.1 80, emphasis in original]

The notion of an embodied mind that moves in a scaffolded

smart world is gaining credence and momentum and calls into

question the presumed nebulous heights of pure intel lect. I t

embeds the mind back in its fleshy home.

I t paves the way for the special ised, segmented western

world to reconverge in the service of holism. Works l ike

Krueger's VIDEOPLACE pioneer this path and thread a

needle across the perceived mind/body split. Mind and its

constructs work in harmony with Body, while Body

teaches Mind how to engage with and play with the

system. Interactive artworks of this i lk directly subvert the

inherited problem of mind/body dualism. Communion with

such a work requires an integrated mind/body approach.

The tendencies in interactive art to think first of the

audience and second of the means to address them is a

welcome change and promises to be a more wholesome

and natural persuasion than traditional approaches in both

art and technology. As the interface evolves to adapt to and

partner with the human agent, a holistic, interactive total

art wil l ensue that al lows for impressive media

envelopment that might do more than just be an

entertaining i l lusion, and instead accelerate understanding

of subsumed aspects of our humanity. I f one takes

inspiration from theories such as those propsed by Heil ig or

Wagner, or perhaps from the art that draws on such

theories, the indications are that the disembodied mind and

eye that so powerful ly divorced us from our sensorium may

be increasingly challenged by a total art. Artists such as

Bil l Viola realise the crucial need for such an art:

In my work the visual is always subservient to the field,

the total system of perception/cognition at work, the five

senses are not individual things but, integrated with the

mind, they form a total system and create this field, an

experiential field which is the basis of conscious

awareness. This is the only true whole image. [26,

p.268]

Rationality has marched countless advances through our l ives,

but at the expense of our sense of wholeness. In thought, action,

art and l ife our anti-body tendencies need checking in favor of

nurturing the bodies and ecosystems that al low us and our

abstractions to exist. Philosopher Karsten Harries recognises

this imbalance:

The old Adam fell when his spirit awoke and let him see

his own nakedness. The new Adam wil l be born when

his spirit is brought as a sacrifice. Man having suffered

the pains of individuation, having emancipated himself

from the mother and from the home, finds that the price

he has paid for his emancipation is too high. His world

has become meaningless and he wants to return. [9]

(qtd. [22, p.92])

The broader need to integrate body and mind, corporeality

and spirit, may be currently viewed as a larger and urgent

necessity on a worldwide scale, as we continue to plunder

our physical and environmental capabil ities for short-l ived

material ist ends. I t could be cautioned that apocalyptic

nightmares mark the dead end of the over-simplified

mind/body cul-de-sac. We may have to redress the balance

to return the mind to its rightful home in the body, and the

burgeoning field of multisensory interactive art may be an

invaluable tool in this process.

Note

*

The word fascinate comes from the Latin fascinare, which refers to the abil ity of dancing flames to

attract attention.

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About the Author

Maria Coleman is currently engaged in a practice-based Ph.D.

at the School of Art, Design and Printing, Dublin Institute of

Technology entitled Body Responsive Media Environments.

She holds an honours degree in Fine Art (Sculpture) from

Limerick School of Art and Design, and a first class honours

M.Phil . in Music and Media Technology from Trinity College

Dublin.

Paper Original ly Published in Crossings - Volume 5, Issue 1

ejournal of Art & Technology

WWW.ARTSTAP.COM

MAKERS Award

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Alice Burns is an Artist she lives and works in Northern Ireland. Her recent solo exhibition Loci of

Memory was made possible by the support of Ards Borough Council and The Arts and Disabil ity

Forum. She received a first class, BA (Hons), Fine and Applied Arts Degree from the University of

Ulster Belfast, in 201 0.

Alice Burns art practice develops out of participatory narratives, other peoples stories and

combines this with a desire to play creatively with the material of the archive as she develops

experimental and interactive ways of [re]-presenting artifact and narrative materials. The

experiential nature of documents, artefacts, and narratives their abil ity to be woven together in

relation to the fal l ibi l i ty and fidel ity of individual and collective memory drive this practice.

Via a process of dialogue and interaction the transaction between the story giver and artist is

woven into encoded objects that represent the unspoken or the unspeakable and memory

acquires a physical presence in the work. Others can engage or re-engage with these narratives

through these objects. Connections can be made, entangled and disentangled as the audience

engages and re-threads their particular narrative.

Future projects

I am working on several projects exploring individual and collective memory and narrative. The first is a long-term project Remember When that

evolves through storytel l ing and reminiscence workshops with age specific groups or individuals, initial ly working from photographs with a Northern

Ireland specific context, taken pre 1 968. Exploring l ifes commonalities and shared experiences, this work combines my personal narrative history

along with groups of others who I work with as a way of foregrounding the nature of (in this project) Northern Irish l ife pre- troubles.

Myth Making

The work is exploring Urban Myths regarding mental health using the definition of Myth by Wil l iam Bascom.They are accepted on faith; they are

taught to be believed; and they can be cited as authority in answer to ignorance, doubt, or disbelief.

The work is based on the construct of the urban myth, a col lection of narratives via a blog and a video instal lation. Participants are asked, Do you

believe in mental i l lness they are free to answer this question in whatever way they wish. Using the aesthetic of the urban myth actors not

necessari ly the authors of the blog posts read a sentence or two from the blog posts to video. The video provides an alternative vehicle for the

narratives to be presented to another audience and the myth progresses.

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My interests l ie in transitions and transformations, masquerade and play. Borrowing elements and

motifs from the black box theatre/cinema space my work deals with social performance and

identity construction and takes notions of performance and artifice as present in theatre as a

metaphor for wider concerns. The mise-en-abyme is a structure that I have continual ly referenced.

I am interested in how mirroring and repetition can draw attention to and deconstruct the whole.

This structure is similar to that of a Pirandell ian hall of mirrors with infinite reflections of itself. My

aim is that these pieces create l iminal spaces that disorientate or re-orientate perception, and

question what may be mimicry. Repetition is an important element of the work, creating

awareness of a difference between the passing of real time and represented time.

Born in Mull ingar, Co.Westmeath, Samus Mc Cormack graduated from DIT in 2006 with a first

class honours degree in Fine Art receiving the Best Fine Art Student Award, and in addition was

awarded the Gold Medal for Academic Excellence from the Faculty of Applied Arts, DIT. In 201 2

he completed MFA in Sculpture at the NCAD, Dublin. He has exhibited his work in two solo

exhibitions, most recently in Ball ina Arts Centre, 201 0 and in group shows across Ireland including

the Stone Gallery, Dublin; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; igse, Carlow; Tulca, Galway; Broadstone,

Dublin; Galway Arts Centre, TACTIC, Cork Mostertruck Gallery, Dublin. Upcoming exhibitions

include commissioned works for Plastic Arts, Rua Red Tallaght, and Invited MFA Graduates at

Boyle Arts Festival. In 201 0 he was one of the award winners at the Claremorris Open Exhibition,

curated by Lisa Le Feuvre. He has received a number of grants from the Westmeath County

Council Arts Office and in 2006 received the Emerging Artist Bursary Award, leading to a

commissioned artwork for the Westmeath County Council s Collection.

www.seamusmccormack.com

Facsimile, 201 2, Video Projection

Presence/Presents, 201 2, Instal lation - Two Channel Overlapped

Projections with Audio

La Rptition, 2011 , Two Monitor Video and Sculptural Instal lation with

Audio

Two Doors, 2011 , Video Projection with Audio

Galatea, 201 0, Video Projection with Audio

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Jul iette Losq (B. 1 978, UK) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 201 0, having gained her BA in Fine Art from Wimbledon

College of Art (2007). Losq won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2005 and has work in various collections including All Visual Arts and

The Saatchi Collection.

Selected exhibitions include:

201 2: AVA The Collection at All Visual Arts, London

2011 : National Open Art Competition, Chichester; Catl in Art Prize, London; 40 Artists 80 Drawings, The Drawing Gallery (touring)

201 0: Pulse Miami, with Theodore Art; Jul iette Losq / Darren Norman / Eric Poitevin with Theodore Art, New York; Diploma Show,

Royal Academy of Art

2009: Life of Wood, GS Tower (1 F), Seoul; 2 x 2, Fred [London] Ltd ; Premiums 2009, Royal Academy of Art;

2006: Drawing Breath: surveying 1 0 years of the Jerwood Drawing Prize, London and touring; Different Views: Sharon Beavan, Jane

Dixon, Jul iette Losq, Barry Martin, Keir Smith, The Drawing Gallery, London; London Art Fair, Art Projects with The Drawing Gallery

In 'The Clearing' we feel at our most safe and yet our most vulnerable: stray too close to the edge and the forest may snatch you into its depths.

Perhaps it is for this reason that wild spaces within our cities and town are sites of aversion[1], for they evoke the point at which the forest