Remote Controls, Computers and Art Experiences By George Szekely

w atching my six-year-old child wearing 3-D glasses, commanding his joysticks, and aiming her laser guns at hologram images is a shock to my traditional way of

seeing. Children's visual world today bears little relationship to either my childhood scenery or the serene impressionist landscapes I admire as an adult. Blinking bright lights, hydrospeed images, and sophisticated game boards have become visu- al by-products of a shrinking computer chip. So- phisticated graphics create images that the hands of even the youngest child control. No wonder that traditional art fantasies and presentations in art classes appear less exciting by comparison. The insatiable consumers of Laser Tag, Nintendos and computerized sketch pads come to art with vastly different experiences. As artists, young and old, create art in response to personal experiences and to what is basically important to them, there is no question about what become important to a new age of youngsters: the computer. Not all of these children want to become computer artists, but the sensations, the fascination, the process and play of contemporary toys and entertainment systems suggest new visuals, materials, and tech- niques for appreciating and making art. And be- cause children view computers less technically than adults, they can take inspiration from com- puter functions and capabilities to enhance their own creativity.

This new world requires a diversity of respons- es from artists and teachers in seeing the electron- ic world as an influential environmental phenome- non. Stressing prepackaged computer art or video coloring books is not the answer. We must pro- vide opportunities that encourage children to reex- amine, rethink, and refeel as well as resee their video-computer experiences creatively and, with equal creativity, to find personal ways of using these phenomena. The feel of remote-controlled images, of long-distance visualizing, for example, suggests new art moves, art visions, and art ap- proaches in any media. Artists of today need to find different means of expressing themselves, so schools can no longer offer old answers and time- less art projects. Art education has to teach ways of responding to the new, for it is only through such teaching that each generation will be able to flexibly relate to new visual worlds. Children's toys and entertainment interests often best repre- sent these new worlds.

Dr. George Szekely is program chair, Art Educa- tion, at the University o f Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.

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In art class, we can explore these new worlds: We can go anywhere, become anyone or anything; taking on new roles, trying our new moves, imitat- ing new equipment, or imaginarily examining new situations and resources. We can become comput- ers and joysticks, we can remote control moves and ideas with or without the actual equipment. As artist-teachers, we deal with enlarging ideas and visions as we help children learn to translate their ideas and visions to art. Using children's viv- id play worlds, art ideas are built from their own experiences and resources. As teachers, we can facilitate their seeing connections between play and art worlds. Today, it may be the computer- ized toy world and its relationship to children's art; however, as a teacher, I am always less con- cerned with students' learning of particular skills than with the development of their openness to the contemporary world as the basis of ideas for art making.

Multiple-Image Experiencing On a wall of television monitors, scores of

blinking images appear in tight rows and project their voices in chorus. The place may be a control room at the Kennedy Space Center, an electronic showroom, a video arcade, or a television station control room where multiple-screen impressions play out an incredible visual experience. When the television salesperson is out of sight, children sneak up to take charge of the remote controls. Once in charge, they rescramble the multiple im- pressions on the screens to create a mass of com- peting pictures and sounds. This is the nature of contemporary creative urges.

On make-believe screens in an art class, we also play with remote controls. Each young artist works on multiple screens, drawing at the same time. Controls are operated by a student who holds a television controller and calls out com- mands for all to switch channels and screens, to pause, or to move from station to station. As stu- dents are instructed to switch back and forth, they engage in playful art based on contemporary vi- sions that live in multiple-television homes and in the many monitors we face daily. Artists often work on multiple images simultaneously as to- day's art, in every media, is influenced by video screens and imagery. Looking at the world as a controller--an all-purpose controller of sounds, movements, and images all played out for us and before us--we can view art as a way to activate, stop, and select what we want from our larger environment. This position offers great powers to all children in operating video games, and to child artists in maneuvering art as they would control electronic imagery. Being controlled--or being the object of controllers--zapped, and moved by tech- nology also allows another range of art and play

Because children view computers less technically than adults, they can take inspiration from computer functions and capabilit ies to enhance their own creativity.

responses to be explored.

Interpreting from the Remote- Controlling Experience

With a feathery finger touch, we active and move forms and images through sophisticated changes and actions. Children, today, are used to holding powerful devices of change in their hands: television controllers, garage door openers, tele- phone remote controls, light controllers, remote beepers, and a variety of electronic and remote- controlled toys. The typical child can maneuver an army of remote-controlled planes, cars, and boats, as well as command another legion of fight- ers on video screens. Be amazed as you read all the instructions on a remote controller: on-off, left-right, replay, fire, volume, contrast, turbo, and so on. We can read the same command panel and respond to its suggestions through drawings. As an artist, the creative process is a constant en- gagement in personal commands as an artist talks to himself/herself in advancing work. The new art can amplify this process by using tangible control tools. It can also focus on a variety of physical, vocal, or merely gestural commands to first pro- pose and then act on art ideas.

Each remote-control device possesses a range of moves and changes to be playfully referred to and interpreted by artists. Remote controlling can be exercised through creative substitutions of tools and materials. Remote controlling a heavy garage door or a minute electronic detail on a screen can be envisioned as you move other small or large forms and details in an artwork. The use of codes commands invisible impulses, as well as the qualities of moves, and changes offer a wide range of clues for creative references. Thinking of art making as a remote-control process allows for a new range of movements, ideas, and messages that leave new marks on a variety of new sur- faces.

The "Felt" Touch

The artist's feel of tools, materials, and surfaces has been an important sensuous aspect of art mak- ing. In remote-controlled contacts, material and surface involvements are not immediate but envi- sioned. Instead of focusing on plays with sensuous surfaces, attention is paid to conceptual decisions, choices, and arrangements made at a distance. The new art is removed from the body as time, space, language, and electronics become interme-

diaries. Remote-controlled art involves planning for somewhere else or for someone else. To expe- rience controlling decisions, I often have students try out artworks (1) on their own bodies, drawing on their chests or stomachs or (2) by drawing the results of commands on other students' backs to see how it feels or how it may look.

Remote-controlling plays range between two ex- tremes. At one extreme lies skill-oriented play in which students manipulate ideas and objects mak- ing long-distance contact with surfaces. For exam- ple, students may use fishing rods to paint with and sinkers on a fishing line. Or, they may make remote-drawing contacts by using vacuum cleaner extension tubes with drawing tools attached to them. Voice-controlled computers are models for another play series where ideas and images are re- mote controlled through lights (e.g., flashlights), code words, hand signals, or body-and-movement language signalling to another person standing by as a receiving computer.

In this latter series, physical contact is com- pletely severed between the artist and the work but the immediate object of our computer artmak- ing is to transfer the sense of the engendered free- dom and excitement to creating in various media. And in my continuous use of the computer in ele- mentary art classes, I have not tried to replace artists' traditional relationship to their work, be- cause the most competent command of the key- board and the wildest sense of creative power can- not replace either the sensuous smell of canvas or the earthy feel of finger paint.

A Playful Contemporary Approach to Art

Remote-controlling plays allow contemporary ideas to enter into art acting and thinking. Art making--at a distance--promotes new and excit- ing feelings, moves, and perspectives. It is like learning to walk again, as each new step suggest fresh imagery and possibilities. Loosening stu- dents' control over traditional art tools and tech- niques readies them for opportunities to establish new contacts with surfaces and for planning to make marks on these surfaces. Art is no longer approached from the traditional writing stance: clutched hands tracing measured penmanship marks. As mechanical grips open, so the body and mind open towards more searching behaviors. Without the developed steady hand to depend on, students more easily part with old movement

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Thinking of a r t m a k i n g as a r e m o t e . c o n t r o l p rocess a l lows for a n e w range of m o v e m e n t s , ideas and m e s s a g e s tha t l eave n e w marks on a var ie ty of n e w surfaces.

loads and thinking while freely exploring playful gestures. As students simultaneously become makers and an audience to their art, they encoun- ter opportunities for remote viewing, remote sens- ing, and long-distance thinking. Removed from sensuous material plays and the physical "scenes" of battle, art making becomes a more thoughtful and conceptual maneuvering. As stu- dents experience a distance between themselves and their art, they find more room for considering new possibilities, larger views, and more sweeping decisions. While traditional art is often more con- cerned with details, these remote-controlled plays create less fussy art, with a faster-pace tendency and a more "whole screen" and "whole paper" approach.

An Open View of Remote Controlling

Toy telephones become computer modems, Lego constructs act as joysticks, and a Spalding becomes a ball controller. Remote-controlling ex- periences draft children's toys, from robots equipped with drawing tools to flashlights used as signaling devices. Super controllers constructed from Tinker Toys are simply plugged into imagina- tions. With the feeling that anything can become a remote controller and everything can be remote controlled, we survey a world of possibilities. What would be the most unusual thing to remote control? What commands would you use? Stu- dents test remote-control ideas envisioning the control of a body of water and its changing shapes in passing it through funnels, pipes, and sprin- klers. And they Consider remote controlling trains, people, and their shadows as they envision a new art, where each form and each color or mark on a paper can be activated and constantly changed.

Control Plays

Control plays may involve an exploration of the feel of controlling at different distances and speeds using a variety of controllers. Plays may study the feel of being controlled and responding with ap- propriate gestures and movements to commands. Control devices can be studied to explore house- hold controllers and beyond them, including both old and new remote-control toys and their possi- ble adaptation for art uses. Remote plays may also involve planning remote commands and envision- ing subsequent moves and actions:

(a) Body extensions are plays that create a dis-

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tance between the artist and the art surface as fin- gers, hands, and arms are extended so that they experience the art tools as remote controlled. Ex- tenders such as pickup sticks can be taped to fin- gers, or longer extensions such as PVC pipes can be constructed as hand-operated devices. Marks made with remote controllers vary in character depending on the length, weight, and grip over ex- tension devices. Fun handles such as bicycle grips or handles made from plumbing parts, tweezers or tongs propose unusual control challenges.

Such remote-control plays are modeled after old remote-controlled toys that used cable attach- ments with remote-control steering devices. Ro- bot-arm or remote-arm construction sets form an- other toy category that can be brought to class and used as models for remote plays.

(b) Movements of tools and the actions of peo- ple can be remote-controlled. Pretending to be choreographers helps students plan movement ideas as they use words and gestures to command each other in specific ways. Copying involves one student moving while another with an art tool be- comes a shadow imitating the actions. Games to Control or "call" artistic movements require the envisioning of movements it will take for an art work to be made. This builds planning skills as the art envisioned by one person needs to be commu- nicated so it can be executed by others.

(c) One student listens to a paper cup while an- other speaks into a second cup connected by wires. This primitive telephone conversation be- tween artist and fabricator becomes the means by which one remote controls instructions for an artwork made by the other. Voice controls specify moods and direct activities from one person to be carried out by machine or by other persons. In- structions travel through microphones, walkie- talkies, play phones, or student-prepared tape re- cordings describing a work. Kids love to whisper to each other, so instructions can be channeled through a secret chain of whispers beginning with the artist and ending with the fabricator.

(d) Toys such as robots can be armed with drawing tools as students use windup, mechanical, and remote-controlled devices to create art. Re- mote-controlled trucks can also be outfitted with graphite dispensers to move powders across art surfaces, and student-modified toys create an ex- citing art arsenal of drawing devices. In addition, existing mechanical drawing toys such as Magna Doodle, Electra Sketch, Etch-o-Sketch, and many others can become a standard item through which to visualize art ideas.

(e) Household equipment assumes new drawing skill potential when given new drawing attach- ments. For example, record players, mixers, and fans working at various speeds and revolutions may gain a variety of art functions. Hairdryers and fans can move about colors, while typewriters and sewing machines can explore a variety of re- motely made marks and drawings. Many house- hold items such as mixers can become painting tools, and even their imaginary use can be adapted to remote-controlled plays. For each remote-con- trol project, students dream up and speak of countless other exciting possibilities. The exten- sion of ideas and the dream of beyond what is possible at the moment is an important part of the experience.

(f) In making believe that any object can serve as a remote controller, we try out new forms and shapes in auditioning their controlling abilities. Even an egg becomes a new controller shape as it's being held: Students describe its possible func- tions, controls, and messages. Each sculptural shape, each moving part suggests control ideas and functions. And each controller--from hair curlers and old switches to a pencil--suggests dif- ferent command actions and movement ideas. We dream of the most unusual controller and the things it can do as we remote control time, events, or even history. Through our visualizations, we begin to see new possibilities for remote control- ling in art and in society: We can describe a re- mote-controlled school or vacation, or even a per- fectly remote-controlled world.

Conclusion

As a young art student, I was shocked to over- hear my teacher's long phone conversation with assistants as he made and ordered his artworks over the phone. Today, my students order art from each other over play phones. Phone play helps to teach the notion that we can send and control art ideas through machines or from person to person. In moving away from handmade works, we consider new ways of making art and thinking of art. Students are challenged to expand their art views, as well as awareness of how art can be vi- sualized and its vision communicated. We learn to type art on a make-believe or real keyboard-- commanding it on screens----or speak it into a tape recorder. Intermediaries between the artist and the work are studied in the form of mechanical, human, or even invisible messengers. Part of each art lesson requires asking: "What is a r t ? "~and "What can it be as we investigate the next step?"

Using students arcade skills and computer inter- ests, we further think and act "remotely", chan- neling these actions towards art. Yet, the creative concepts expressed in computer fantasies may never find expression on an actual surface. It's not important. As children's fingers dance on re- mote-control buttons, respond with incredible speed and dexterity to computer images, and

move with unfailing responsiveness to configura- tions with joysticks, we begin to see that their hands are not the pencil-clutching hands that art teachers were used to in the past. These hands have new skills and talents that can be channeled into new expressions. These students are trained to follow complex image patterns and idea se- quences that have artistic implications: "Press B, then A; then push buttons to roll back to B and pause." These moves are signalled with amazing ease and few rehearsals. Such ease in thinking through a machine, and in visualizing through a screen, is unique to this younger generation. Un- like previous generations, our children view moni- tors and computer images with pleasure and are relaxed at the controls of computers and remote- controlled devices. While elementary school art generally may not be rushed to a computer line, in our classroom exercises, we think of a software program as the choreography for a work of art--a sort of game plan preceding action. Elementary school art can--along with all other aspects of the curriculum--incorporate the new interests and ap- titudes that have changed students approach to image-making skills.

Children's toys are valuable gauges of interests and important clues to the art teacher. The youn- gest child's teddy bears have gained sophisticated voices so they can read and talk and even respond to the human voice. The pre-arcade crowd plays with sophisticated remote-controlled cars and skateboards. Computer chips and voice modules are built into children's watches, talking car seats, and talking lunch boxes. Talking to three-dimen- sional forms, from teddy bears to robots, has be- come a reality. Ordering shapes on a computer screen or moving lines through voice-controlled acts is not news to children anymore. Moving from toys that sing and dance, the new art needs to have a sense and feel of what is today common- place.

Artists have always talked to themselves and to their artworks. In class we "talk" to artworks; We interview paintings and design make-believe commands for drawings. We type out instructions for drawing moves and line sequences. As con- temporary screens and toys talk back to us in the art class, we pretend and imitate the choices of colors, line and shape, thus bringing them to life. Remote control devices stand symbolically as the tools for a new school art. Through their investi- gations, it is possible to examine the many rela- tionships between words and images, movements and images, sounds and images, in playful for- mats. In remote-controlled plays, students experi- ence creating at a distance from an art surface, creating with ideas and not just tools and materi- als. Students magnify their powers as they create through remote-control devices and inventive ex- tensions to their art tools. The remote controller, a familiar contemporary item, is merely one exam- ple of how artists find relevance in contemporary phenomena, which they playfully interpret. �9

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