DAY 3 - October 10th

What are the questions that are unanswered about each others work?

Interrogation of Michelle Teran

today is a discussion about networked objects and portals

why is it necessary to have a portal?

why is a physical manifestation of presence important?

online environments / tunneling concept

Day 3
Consolidating the nature of connection, why is it so intriguing?

http://www.interaccess.org/telekinetics

M: The interface, although interesting in thinking about how it can take various forms, is not the most compelling part. It's the travel. You are sending yourself through a portal by opening up a channel from one space to the next. You are sending something of yourself through - transference of a data body, it undergoes a transformation. What comes out is a form of embodiment, but it is embedded within a piece of furniture or a moving object. Indeed there is a presence or an essence but it's not necesarily a literal representation of yourself. Something goes through another plane and when it comes back it's in an altered form.

N: In relation to your ideas about portals there is an interesting discussion by Jalal Toufic about tunneling and labyrinths. He talks about these in relation to the idea of a threshold, a space that you pass through that inevitably changes the way you return.

http://www.alamut.com/past/0104.html
http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2001fall/toufic.shtml

M: By sending something through a network, for instance, a gesture of hitting a spoon where there is a touch sensor - what gets sent out is a spoon hitting a glass - not a direct representation of that person. The gesture is specific, it is codifed enough that you know what it means, its embedded in a social code e.g. a spoon hitting a glass signifies attention, 'i have something to say' or 'something's about to happen'.

Basically telephones, and telecommunications, teleportaton are inevitably tied into spiritual world. The classic 'mysterious knocking' or 'voices from the air' all meshes into these situations and amplifying it makes you more aware that you are existing on many planes. As a result space is mythologized, or inanimate objects are animated.

http://www.techgnosis.com/recordangels.html

If you send something through a portal then in what form does it come out?

N: Sometimes it is difficult to consolidate, because there is a lot of slippage...

M: Then everything can be seen as a portal, which is perhaps too ambient to consider it in a performative/artistic context. One definition of networking that has a strong history is an active network joined together for a specific reason, e.g. this is the input, this is the output, action/reaction, or a simple mirroring device like a window, a 'hole in space'. It is a classic in sci-fi movies - the rectangular screen that appears in the middle of the desert.

N: What is needed to be asked is why are you connecting? Why do you want to? What is the reason you are joining these things together?

M: For instance the strong social situation of a dinner, the translocal connection joins in with a cultural context and we start to play with the surface of the interface. The social encounter is enhanced by the addition of strange objects and with connection to somewhere else.

N: So now you need to know how to click it onto a deeper level of connection?

M: There are people committed to the time and space, it's an event based situation. Perhaps it's more interesting to think about embedding networked objects within every day spaces. This could be related to the idea of ubiquitous computing, where objects in spaces are also computational devices. However, not necessarily in a functional way, like the refrigerator that places an order at the grocery store whenever it runs out of milk. Thinking more about filling world with creatures that are strange and mythical because they appear almost normal, yet at the same time not. But it is about now about developing a vocabulary about why that thing is there. How to do that in a more complex, non-direct way, something comes through a portal and has ended up in a cafe. This is where it has ended up and maybe no one understands that language, that manifestation, but then it becomes a myth of that space.

N: Mythologized spaces are sometimes unvalidated monuments.

M: Objects are portals like that spikey goat food we encountered on the beach this morning. Yellow flowers growing out of spikes. Or a strange creature - seaweed in sand. Jeff Noons work 'Vurt' had an interface of feathers that took you to a dream world. While you're in this dream world something comes back with you. This thing that is with them was in the dream world, but it is now in a physical form, it exists somewhere inbetween.

N: In Colombian shamanic rituals they have rattles that have feathers on them, and these take you into a world of visions and dreams. This particular experience is also specific to the particular bird these feathers are from.

M: But it is also about places in the everyday e.g. Jeff and I were at a carnival in brussels and noticed that whenever somebody won a stuffed bear they carried it on their shoulders. It was a strange situation because suddenly I saw these bears transformed into interstitial beings. Something was sent through a portal and now someone was wearing it on their shoulders. This is a situation that is extremely bizarre, but is socially acceptable because of that particular context. This brings up the issue of 'safety zones', where absurd configurations and notions are ok in certain frameworks. Here it is okay to have a children's train ride covered by artificial ferns and have just one that waves, or a talking tree.



N: Objects that return which have been in an altered realm.

M: On one hand structured meetings in connected performances, social functions, dance, playing cards, ping pong etc. eludes towards gaming and play.

N: A really coherent book on the different types of play is 'homo ludens: a study of the play element in culture' by Johan Huizinga.

M: A networked object becomes part of a social space. It's like a person that keeps on going to same cafe over and over. That repeated action is in a sense mythologized.

N: Yes I remember someone like that at a bar I used to work at, whom we called 'astrology pete'.

M: At one cafe, the fern in the corner waves one of its fronds, but then how does that have anything to do with a connection to another space - is that too abstract? Is it necessary to know what it's trying to say and if there is somebody on the other end?

N: An entity or force is trying to send a signal, or a message that may be an omen or a sign.

M: If you were sitting in a cafe, and you got a signal would it be enough for you to receive that signal, or have the signal function in the general space. Would you want a two way channel? If someone knocked would you want to knock back?

Another consideration is a codifed social situation, for instance 'moos and muds', online multi user text-based environments. The first MUD was developed in 1989. In these online worlds you type in descriptions of the space and how you move through the space. You type 'i go down hallway and turn left in to library'. Human and non-human entities (bots)inhabit these environments. These can take the form of situations where you have limited ability to actually build the environment and participate by playing a role playing game, or, in the case of MOOs, where most of the time is spent socializing and creating objects. In these environments you might encounter familiar social spaces, certain types of architecture that also presume a certain social function eg. a dining room, bedroom, library, a ball room. Improvised actions can transpire, like a roller skating party in the ball room. Programmers can exercise their skills by programming personal and meaningful objects into the spaces.'I want to program a vase into this room'. So these are are creative online acts around building, decorating and inhabiting worlds together.

A summary of these different types of networked portals and objects.

1) the hole in space, a connected social function
2) mythologizing space; portals and entities becoming a part of the social space
3)the idea of taking what happens online and taking back out into the physical space and vice versa.

If you a mapping and paralleling what type of connection that is, people converging into 'lamdamoo' a shared virtual space for example but you are still in your own physical space, but all porting into a third. So, if we were to bring this third space back out into the physical realm, then we would all be inhabiting and manipulating a physical space together, but still at a distance. Instead of text, we experience a physical output. The world would consist of physical avatars and tangible objects. The world could be fantasy or embedded in the every day.

N: That's a pretty scary thing to take the connection outside of oneself, it encourages one to lose their own intuitive sense of connection. I don't like that notion.

M: Or you can have for instance 'Queens day' in Amsterdam, when the whole city becomes a carnival and bric/brac market, or an amusement park structure where the you can act in ultra-animated ways because you are inside a specific frame.

N:These events are 'rites of intensification' this term was coined by Victor Turner, or a duration of 'inversion' for periods of time that often reinforced certain norms in the everyday. This is best described in Bakhtin's carnivalesque in'Rabelais and His World'

M: During the last Queen's Day, as I was walking home, I stumbled upon a group of friends who had assembled a temporary environment in the park out of bric-a-brac that had been left over. First they started with an orange tarp and then they gathered things around them, a computer, a mouse, a card table and a vase a pepper grinder, a tennis racket a children's game and a book.

Looking at this, and spending time in the space, I was inspired to think that you can decorate and inhabit connected environments of your design. Constructing interfaces for the purpose of meeting interfaces, assembling environments according to your need, using bric-a-brac.

Do communication spaces have to be literal, and if not, how abstract can they be before they cease to function as one?

N: There is the history of stones in some cultures, and there are stories in stones, or warnings that you read and encrypt.

M: That's a bit spacey for me.

What we have is 2 basic premises:

1) hole in space, an open up portal to let things pass through
2) distributed network - the object, entity that becomes part of distributed network and is not neccessarily something that is immediately understood but something that becomes part of your life.

I am interested in setting up social ecologies. This is within the strong history embedding the everyday in durational performances. Regarding these teleconnected events, we've presented these as social ecologies, but it ends up being positioned as an event-based performance, and then questioned if it is in fact a performance.

These ideas take on a special resonance when considering the ubiquitousness of Wireless Access Points. I have been recording the ones i come across, e.g. zone around the couch in berlin. nicks place, media labs, etc.







These photographs document how wireless technological networks are embedded in a social spaces. The social network and technological becomes seamless, there is not a separation.

N: Not to mention Sher's Nervus Avidus constellation that represents caffeinated capitalist wireless access points in Manhattan - Starbucks

M: These fragments then come together as a whole, a series or network; small networks makes a larger action. A physical manifestation is important because then people know that there are consequences to these actions, something has been set in motion.

N: It is like an indirect symbolic and poetic action, and with that statement I always think of a text by Alain Robbe-Grillet, who throws light upon this vexed territory between a lot of artists and activist movements. "Rather than being of a political nature, commitment, for the artist means to be fully aware of the current problems of his own language, convinced of their extreme importance, and desirous of solving them from within. There in lies his sole possibility for remaining an artist, and also, no doubt, by means of some obscure and distant consequence, of maybe one day being of some use - maybe even to the revolution."

M: For me connectivity is about messages that don't have direct feedback but have resonances.

N: Like a ripple in a pond, the initial action ripples out and causes movement in ways that seem more fundamental rather than gimmicks or preaching.

M: I think that there are different levels of enjoyment in space time configurations, you open up the portal and go in and have fun. I have an aversion to having a bunch of people jumping in front of a camera and streaming to another space. Or perhaps aversion is too strong a statement. I'm looking for something a little more poetic.

A primal fundamental of communicating, moving on from a video wall of someone staring and you're looking back. 'well i just want to dance with my virtual body', 'well i just want to sing a song together'. This is a movement on from the primitive 'I see you, you see me'. There is a big difference between using the internet as a telephone or as an distributed network, and each has its implications.

I like to connect and have direct feedback it's nice, there are moments when you get that feedback. Practically speaking, event based connections are easier to impliment and they also convince people it's an interesting thing to do.

N: But you can't put your finger on the distributed network as easily. That's why its so intriguing and why I'm interested in constucting these types of situations. As soon as i feel like someone has put their finger on me I contract and cease up, where as in a distributed network there is more room for expansion and multiplicity.

M: I'm talking about the conflict about packaging. People are excited when it's simple and clear. It's tangible, it's nice. You can pour wine for each other over the net.

N: but if people see that's all its for it just bourgiosie connectivity .

M: Then it becomes about product, the technological interface, it's a viable product. But it's more excited to think about the experience, and how the object becomes part of this experience. It's the difference between design and perhaps art, although these distinctions are not also so easy. But basically, that the object is only part of the whole.

We can also think about multi-channel modes of connecting as tools for what kind of worlds we can build together. By multi-channel I mean chat, keyworx, video stream, max, telephone, midi, audio, being able to flexibly interchange these things. I can set most of these up quickly. There are others like me. This brings the process into the picture, using multi-channel modes of communication as a way of connecting one space to another in a lab situation.

I would like to start with nothing and build up the space together only through process of being connected can we understand what we need to build- experiencing and building at the same time.

N: Then you get unexpected interconnectedness.

M: Yes, when you set up these things you grapple with indecisiveness, fear, the unknown, then eventually you attain a middle state and go from there. And you don't know what your getting yourself into initially. You have to build up ideas as you go, and try and make it.

N: You have to be working with people who are willing to go into the unknown.

M: Collaborative structures, connected collaboration becomes part of the creating. I get a lot of criticism for not having 'access for all' simply because I believe in these types of collaborations require a working process that not everybody can participate in. I get questioned are you just building for yourselves or who is it for?

N: It seems you are crystallizing things first in closed quarters but then then it can pass on as a model for whomever wants to participate.

M: Exactly. We pass it on, and provide recipes for connected spaces. That's also another form of myth. How to implement it and why it's important. Something important and beyond.