TELE_TRUST
1. Subject
Our notion of ‘identity’ and the way we imagine ‘community’ changes through the electronically networking society. We become networking bodies, living plural locations, temporalities and social constructions at the same time. This changes the basis on which we trust each other. What do ‘presence’ and ‘trust’ mean for a networking body?
Meeting place
I research this topic in the domain of networked art: since 1996 I create ‘meeting places’ in which I invite the audience members to experience themselves as ‘networking bodies’.
I design the ‘meeting places’ for the public city spaces. They have been performed in cities worldwide, like Seoul, New York, Moscow, Shanghai, Amsterdam. Here the ‘meeting places’ can be perceived as contemporary, interactive social portraits in a city environment.
The ‘meeting places’ are performances and installations, functioning as artistic ‘social laboratories’. To develop these ‘meeting places’ I analyze and deconstruct social networked forms of meeting. With this material I subsequently reconstruct a ‘meeting place’ in an esthetic and alienating way, with an special design for social interaction; to generate a reflective and critical play zone for the process of memory, projection and identification. The ‘meeting places’ are spatial systems in which the audience from different perspectives spy on, touch and meet each other.
Interactive Media
In each ‘meeting place’ I combine different forms of physical and virtual media, creating smart environments. Physically, every ‘meeting place’ is designed as an inviting, seducing, visual and tangible environment. Here I invite the audience to experiment and play with wireless social technologies – like combinations of mobile phone, touch devices, video, RFID – to reflect on their individual perception of body, identity, community and alienation.
In TELE_TRUST I show my research project on networked bodies and meetingplaces in an (online) ‘think map’. In this ‘think map’ I include the theoretical, visual and experiential connections of the process, through a network drawings, (spatial) diagrams and text.
In relation to the think map I show my way of working, discuss concepts of interaction, ways to theoretically reflect on audience participation and the relation between the visual diagrams and the reflective text.
To analyze the meeting places, I use the following questions:
- How does the audience participate in these ‘meeting places’?
- Through which method can the interaction be described and reflected upon?
- How does the networking body experience ‘physical, tangible presence’ in the ‘meeting place’?
- What do the notions of ‘private’ and public’ mean for a networking body?
- What do ‘presence’, ‘reciprocity’, and ‘trust’ mean for the networking body?
2. The issues that the presentation intends to raise in the discussion.
Now that the use of communication technology has become a normality in our lives, we both physically and socially internalize the use of these technologies.
Subsequently interactive arts using social technologies form an increasing and exciting knowledge area for artists and theorists. Their discourse is intertwined with the discourse on changing parameters for social cohesion and trust in the society at large.
However, interactive artworks appear difficult to describe from an academic point of view. One of the reasons for this might be that in different art related discourses (of for example electronic art, video art, painting, performance art, theatre, social sculpture, etc.) different definitions of ‘interactivity’ are being used.
To get more clarity on this point in a large context, I think a specific knowledge production is needed, through the subjective experience and imagination of the artist, writing and reflecting on his/her own interactive artworks.
In TELE_TRUST I explore this in the following way:
I develop my ‘meeting places’ for and through audience participation. In the process of creating I invite the audience as spectator and user of the ‘meeting place’, so I am able to observe the audience interaction. Furthermore, as a host of the ‘meeting place’, I interact with the audience for reflection on the format of interaction I have designed.
In fact, I define the role of the audience as ‘co-researcher’. The ‘meeting places’ are completed through the audience changing the art work, co-design, participate; and exchanging about it with others. Since the topic is communication, the medium is communication.
In TELE_TRUST the artistic process goes hand in hand with theoretical reflection. In relation to conceptual and theoretical research, I write and reflect on the whole process; combining new insights with my long experience of working in this field.
Development of ‘Meeting places’: in collaboration with Artist Hermen Maat, and V2_Institute for Unstable Media Rotterdam (NL).
Karen Lancel, Artist, Master of arts, Member of ARTI Research Group (Artistic Research Theory & Innovation) at the Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK) www.english.ahk.nl/en/research-groups/,
of Professor Henk Borgdorff (Art Theory and Research) and
professor Marijke Hoogenboom (Art Practice and Development).
Amsterdam School of the Arts (AHK)
