I enjoyed working with Lizzie’s methodology today – seeking to better understand the process of audience engagement.  It was interesting to think about why interactive New Media Art requires so much information about the artists intention?  Why is it necessary to prescribe the manner of engagement? is it because the genre is so new that the collective conscious has not yet “embodied” affordances associated with interactive New Media Art (NMA).  For instance it is not necessary when performing a musical concert on a guitar, cello, piano etc to begin by telling the audience how the instrument is made, the mechanisms it contains for making sound and the performance techniques that are going to be brought to bear in generating the musical outcomes.

So, are the words of the artist interventionist?  Are they establishing constraints that lead to a constructed experience that coalesces with or is dictated by the artists stated intention?  Can self-reporting have validity in this situation where the audience has been pre-conditioned by the artists statement?

Given this, does the value of interactive NMA really reside in the personification of experience and not in the physicality and technological wizardryof the installation.  Part of the question we addressed today then is that the value of this experience needs to be reflected in archival material.  How does one reflect on an artwork where by the principle value of the work is in individual experience and not in a tangible object, but in a personal agency

corporeal, material, objective, phenomenal, sensible, substantial, tangible

Notions of corporial experience and distributed consciousness are of particular interest to me – how can we sense these things in a meaningful manner using technology so that we might be able to utilise that data in the generation of realtime sonification and visualisation in the context of an art installation?

Cheer, garth

Notes from a discussion facilitated by Lizzie 2008 08 16

1) RESONANCE - something that has been raised that resonated especially with me was the concept of ‘People as mirrors’.
The idea of situations where people become the mirrors, instead of machines mirroring people: the process of organizing oneself-body in relation to a task (mirroring) – and how this connects in some way to the work Jonathan is doing with task oriented interactions for physiotherapy – finding out ons position/shape in relation to another – then connections between mirroring and empathizing – how this plays out in social interactions between people.

2) DESIRE - a desire (my desire), for a skill, method, experience etc. that I want to engage with over the coming 12 months.

To facilitate self-discovery and reflection in audiences through the use of touch (touching and being touched) – proximal modalities. To evolve a practice that engages people (and me as both maker and audience) through dialogues involving sensations of touch, movement, and communications (spoken, gestural expressions, graphic communications etc).

3) AN OFFERING – where I can make a contribution
In relation to my own practice as an artist-researcher – bio-sensing – research and development strategies for application in creative arts contexts – working with body experience in exhibition settings, then

Important discoveries regarding:

1. The need for calibrated systems, (how you come to know the material/dancer you are working with – and how this knowledge is translated into the artwork.
2. The limits of what can be achieved in relation to measurement and translation of things like ‘emotions’ i.e. the machine cant tell what you are thinking.

In relation to me as the producer – supporting research and collaborations within the ensemble.

4) Some reflections on the discussion around resonances, desires and offerings:
Communicating out from my own body - Catherine Truman.

This is something I’ve been wondering about in my own process – inside the process of translating sensor data into sounds and visual displays – having a strong sense of physical identification with the sounds I’m manipulating during that mapping process – getting lost in particular sounds, and the pleasure of that immersion/envelopment. When this happens, I’m reminded of the pleasure and deep satisfaction that this practice brings to me as an artist, but then also a sense of frustrations that I’ve not been able to implement this level of unity and fluidity in the artworks to the extent that I want.

This brings me back to the offering – what I now know to be important, only by way of realizing mistakes I’ve made so far: the need for artists to know the sensor data as a material – in the same way as a traditional artist/craftsperson knows their material – as points of contact between me, the work and the participant.

Another analogy that comes to mind is that of a costume maker, making costumes for a dance performance – thinking about the costume as a prosthesis, or talisman/amplifier, that amplifies and/or transforms certain qualities of action/presence. In order to for this costume to work – it has to embrace the dancer’s body in one way or another. Knowledge of the data – is knowledge of the form we are making – that is – knowing the way the participants actions – and the machines subsequent reading of these actions by way of various sensor data variables – are bound to a certain range of possibilities (i.e. my heart wont ever beat at 500 beats per minute, my will bend mostly in one direction only).

Without an understanding of this bounded form – the quality and extent of this contact becomes highly tenuous – this is the problem I’ve been struggling with for the past four years now – and its at the top of my list for the next 12 months, in addition to Thinking Through The Body.

Gee, where to start . Everyone here knows that what we are seeking is not absolute. Perhaps it’s impossible to even achieve an approximation. How do we notate a nuance , a transient gesture in amongst a stream of others and make sense of it? What it is to be human, to be present in that moment…in that movement? As an object maker, in the moment when I am most present to that process of making something…I find I am inarticulate. The words don’t even make it to my throat. They don’t exist anywhere I can access. There’s a short circut somewhere. Yet everything seems to be working in concert in my making moment. How can I tell you the story then? How can I take you inside and let you see all the parts working as one? Not separate. One. I have only been able to tell you of shocking discovery-that I am inarticulate in the moment and I want to share much more. I want to understand much more of others too. Access. How do I access this . What language will deliver the infinitessimal sublties of what it is to be human in these moments?
So this project is an experiment in many ways. Thinking through the body is all I know how to do. How can I tell you about it? The art-making process.Perhaps I have to be willing to let go of something in order to relate.