ten dreams of technology - leonardosteve dietz,ten dreams of technology 511 in a sense, davies is...

Tom Stoppard in his play Arcadia states ldquoThe future is dis-

order Itrsquos the best possible time to be alive whenalmost everything you thought you knew is wrongrdquo From

Richard Wagnerrsquos gesamtkunstwerk and Marinettirsquos Futurist Man-ifesto to Nam June Paikrsquos ldquoelectronic highwayrdquo and Jaron Lanierrsquosvirtual reality universe to Roy Ascottrsquos ldquovegetal realityrdquo the histo-ry of the intersection of art and technology is one of the prognos-

tications of an irrefutable inevitable and even immanent futurethat never comes to passndashat least not exactly as we thought itmight [1]

This is not to deny that Douglas Engelbart or Alan Kay orMarc Weiser or even Brenda Laurel and Purple Moon ldquopredictthe future by inventing itrdquo [2] Arguably however ldquotechnological

artrdquo is always less fulfilling than when the technology on which itis based becomes more or less invisiblendasha tool like a pencil asJohn Baldessari would have it The ultimate demonstration mayhave been Engelbartrsquos mousendasha spellbinding vision of a future fewothers could even imagine at the time But it is Perry HobermanrsquosCathartic User Interface that is the most compelling and cathartic

statement of where that future has dumped us [3]In between the invention of a technology and its quotidian dis-

appearance are the manifestoes declaimed and implicit JanetMurray has suggested the notion of ldquoincunabularrdquo media In thisstage we can imagine the outlines of Shakespeare and the veryidea of a written literature in the magical mechanical reproduc-tions of the early printing press We can also imagine somethingbeyond the incunabular RPG and shooter video games

In either case these dreams of a certain future have such com-pelling vitality that we must admire them even as we quibbleabout their navel-gazing mediumness and complain about howsimplistic and complex they are We must then acknowledge theirinability to change humankind into the likeness of their vision

Here in no particular order are ten dreams of technology that

have a future even if we do not yet know what it is and despitethe certainty with which it is predicted [4]

1 The Dream of Symbiosis

The hope is that in not too many years human brains and com-

puting machines will be coupled together very tightly and that

the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever

thought and process data in a way not approached by the infor-

mation-handling machines we know today

ndashJCR Licklider 1960 [5]

Norbert Wiener is credited with coining the term ldquocyberneticsrdquofrom the Greek word ldquokybernetesrdquo or steersman This research oncontrolled feedback loopsndashinteraction between humans andmachinesndashpostulated that by allowing each to learn from theinteraction with the other both could evolve to higher levels of

functioning Many artists have dreamed the dream of whatWienerrsquos younger contemporary JCR Licklider referred to as

ABSTRACT

LEONARDO Vol 35 No 5 pp 509ndash522 2002 509

Ten Dreams of TechnologySTEVE DIETZ

copy 2002 Steve Dietz

This article presents the ten dreams of technology

that frame the author c uratorrsquos selection of ten

new media artworks The ldquodreamsrdquo or themes

presented by the author have been developed

andor questioned by artists throughout the history

of the intersection of art and technology This histo-

ry emerges through artworks that the author

describes as containing a ldquocompelling vitality that

we must admirerdquo The collection of dreams

includes Symbiosis Emergence Immersion World

Peace Transparency Flows Open Work Other

New Art and Hacking The author notes that these

dreams of technology have a future even if it is not

yet determined

Steve Dietz Director New Media InitiativesWalker Art Center Vineland Place Minneapolis MN 55408 USAE-mail stevedietzwalkerartorg Web site httpwwwwalkerartorggallery9

510 Steve Dietz Ten Dreams of Technology

man-machine symbiosis from JosephWeizenbaumrsquos Eliza (1966) to Ken Rinal-

dorsquos Autopoiesis (2000) [6]At the same time as David Rokeby sug-

gests ldquoInteraction is banal We talk toeach other on the street We breathe in airmodify it chemically then breathe it backout to be breathed in by others We drivecars We make love We walk through a

forest and scare a squirrel I am lookingforward to a time when interaction in artbecomes as banal and unremarkable merely another tool in the artistic paletteto be used when appropriaterdquo [7]

Rokebyrsquos Giver of Names (1990-present)

is one of the most profoundly engagingdreams of cybernetic symbiosis in partbecause of his disinterest in a simplisticldquoclick and responserdquo notion of the interac-tive feedback loop [8] There is a great dealof computer research on issues of accurate

visual identification but Giver of Nameshas no such agenda It is a metaphor pro-ducer which invokes the awe of namingand the power of the word to create uni-verses The Giver of Names does not pro-vide a literal description of the object At

the same time it clearly does not generaterandom phrases As Rokeby writes hisintent is that ldquosufficient tension existbetween the object and the name given tochallenge the viewersrsquo preconceptions ofthe objects and draw them into specula-

tive explorationrdquo [9] The symbiotic feed-back loop infers that over the course ofmore than a decade the computer ldquolearnsrdquomore and more about the world and itsoblique almost Delphic utterances of ourmundane combinations of boot and rub-

ber-duck-and-ball objects also causes us toperceive the world differently Not a bad def-inition of art-or of a ldquopartnership that willthink as no human brain has ever thoughtrdquo

2 The Dream of Emergence

Teilhard de Chardin Marshall McLuhanPierre Levy George Dyson ArnoldSchwarzeneggerrsquos character in TerminatorThere is a veritable academy based on the

notion of networks as an extended or aug-mented nervous system out of which intelli-gence eventually and inevitably emergesEven Nathaniel Hawthorne saw this coming

By means of electricity the world of

matter has become a great nerve

vibr ating thousands of miles in a

breathless point of timehellipThe round

globe is a vasthellipbrain instinct with

intelligence

ndashThe House of Seven Gables 1851

As mysteriously and magically ldquointelli-gentrdquo as networks can seem however thecritical common denominator of emer-gent systems is as Steven Johnson puts itthat ldquoagents residing on one scale startproducing behavior that lies one scale

above them ants create colonies urbanitescreate neighborhoods simple pattern-recognition software learns how to recom-mend new books The movement fromlow-level rules to higher-level sophistica-tion is what we call emergencerdquo [10]

Artists have long created works outemergent simple rule-based systems PaulVanousersquos Personal Data Confidante JaneProphetrsquos Technosphere Ken GoldbergrsquosJester and John Klimarsquos forthcoming Rhi-zome interface to name just a few [11]

The role of the network in these projects isessentially to create an open system ofinput to promote adaptat ion withoutwhich complexity is ldquolike the intricatecrystals formed by a snowflake itrsquos a beau-tiful pattern but it has no functionrdquo [12]

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignon-neau are two of the most influential artistsworking consistently with emergent sys-tems A-Volve (1994-95) Life Spacie s(1997) Life Spacies II (1999) and Verbar-ium (1999) [13] With all of these works

relatively simple rules govern which virtualcreatures will ldquoa-volverdquo and the input forbehaviors is provided by viewer-partici-pants both at the physical installation ofthe project and via the Internet

With A-Volve for example visitor input

creates the initial shape of a virtual crea-ture and the longer that shape can survivethe more likely it is to be able to mate andreproduce There is no directly discerniblecorrelation however between a visitorrsquosactions and the evolution of the creatures

Importantly Sommerer and Mignonneauare not simply illustrating their ability towrite algorithms A-Volve and later pro-jects engage in issues of human-machineintercourse as well as the intersection of

the physical and virtual worlds

3 The Dream of Immersion

Whereas the public that representa-

tive of daily life forgets the confines of

the auditorium and lives and breathes

now only in the artwork which seems

the wide expanse of the whole World

ndashRichard Wagner Outlines of the Art-

work of the Future [14]

From Wagner to Daguerrersquos panoramicdioramas to James Turrellrsquos Roden Craterartists have dreamed of artworks in which

the viewer is totally immersed So-calledvirtual reality is one technological manifes-tation of this dream One of the earliestpioneers in this regard was Myron Kruegerwho created what he called ldquoresponsiveenvironmentsrdquo and coined the term ldquoartifi-

cial realityrdquo Regarding the efficacy of whatcame to be called virtual reality Kruegerhad this to say in an interview

It is true that todayrsquos virtual reality

provides very limited tactile feedback

almost no proprioceptive feedback (as

would be provided by walking on a

sandy beach or on rough terrain) rare

opp ortunit ies to sme ll and litt le

mobility However it is just getting

started Criticizing a new idea because

it is not yet fully realized seems unrea-

sonably impatient On that basis the

caves at Lascaux would never have

been painted because we did not have

a full palette and could not animate in

three dimensions Give us a few cen-

turies and then revisit this complaint

[15]

Not quite a few centuries later one ofthe most important and successful heirsworking with immersive environments is

Char Davies and her works Osmose (1995)and Eacutepheacutemegravere (1998) [16] For her envel-opment is core and at the same time anti-Cartesian

For a long time I have been interested

in conveying a sense of being

enveloped in an all-encompassing all-

surrounding space a subjective

embodied experience that is very dif-

ferent from the Cartesian notion of

absolute emty abstract xyz space

[17]

Steve Dietz Ten Dreams of Technology 511

In a sense Davies is attempting to cre-ate completely non-technical feeling spaces

and experiences with some of the highesttechnology available [18] One way shedoes this is to use breath and balance as ameans of navigation It is not about ges-turing or tracking or manipulating inputdevices One uses onersquos whole body to float

through the worlds of Osmose Daviesrsquodream of immersion is an almost literalonendashdreamlike and envelopingndashwith nopretense at simulation and no mimeticworries about the computerrsquos ability torender polygons in order to create photo-realistic environments

4 The Dream of World Peace

An ocean cable is a living fleshy

bond between severed portions of the

human family along which pulses of

love and tenderness will run backward

and forward forever By such strong

ties does it tend to bind the human

race in unity peace and concord

ndashHenry Field [19]

There is no communication technologythat assures world peace The rhetoric goesthat the ability to communicate quicklyand easily leads to greater understandingwhich then leads to tolerance and the cer-tainty of harmony Demonstrably this is not

true and arguably whether it is the goal ofprosecuting war without casualties byremote communication with munitions ornetworks of terrorist ldquosleeper cellsrdquo that arealso remotely activated the communica-tions network and technologies have not

had any calculable effect on humanityrsquospenchant for destruction

Nevertheless the dream remains power-ful As Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabi-nowitz put it ldquoWe must create at the samescale as we can destroy The counterforce

to the scale of destruction is the scale ofcommunication and our legacy or epi-taph will be determined in many ways byour ability to creatively employ informalmultimedia multicultural conversationaltelecommunications and information tech-

nologiesrdquo [20]Galloway and Rabinowitz pioneers of

seminal projects such as the Satellite ArtsProject (1977) and Hole In Space (1980)

instigated a network of electronic cafeacutes atthe time of the 1984 Olympics which hadnodes in five Los Angeles neighborhoods

as well as in the Museum of ContemporaryArt In many ways this was a harbinger ofthe Internet cafeacutes to come But Gallowayand Rabinowitzrsquos electronic cafeacute wasexplicitly community-based providingchannels of exploration between groups

and geographical locales that did not usu-ally connect despite being in the same cityIn addition they were visionary about cre-ating multi-modal tools with which onecould write draw and share images with-out much prior computer knowledge and

not solely through a standard-issue key-board and mouse These ideas of physicalcomputing are only now coming into themainstream

Galloway and Rabinowitz went on tocreate a permanent Electronic Cafeacute Interna-tional on 18th Street in Santa Monica in1989 which actively programmed globaltele-events for over a decade most of itprior to the popular explosion of theWorld Wide Web Contemporary engagedprojects such as the Sarai New Media Ini-

tiative in New Delhi India are an impor-tant continuation of dreams first glimpsedat the Electronic Cafeacute

5 The Dream of Transparency

A corollary to issues of communications istransparency The modernist ethics of formfollows function without camouflagingartifice or the contemporary open sourcemovement and general public license which

require software code to be accessible andmodifications to be returned to the com-munity of users for further iterationTransparency also has tendrils in eventslike Happenings or cinema veriteacute whichbreak down the codes of theater and filmto transparently present life as art

01orgrsquos life_sharing project is not exact-ly like the joke where two behavioral psy-chologists meet on the street and sayldquoYoursquore fine how am Irdquo But it dreams ofa transparency that exposes their life to theoutside world almost as clearly as to them-

selves 01org have set up their computerrsquosfile sharing system so that anyone with anInternet connection can access their files

equally as well as they can I have had theexperience of e-mailing 01org about ameeting and having a stranger from

Boston reply whether he should come toNew York to meet me then also life_shar-ing has little to do with the idea of expo-sure and voyeurism per se although it doeshave an element of durational perfor-mance which is as much about percep-

tionmdashrecognizing life as artmdashas spectacleCrucial to the project however is its cen-tral tenet the equation ldquofile sharing = lifesharingrdquo In part this is simply the realityof the contemporary fulfillment of Licklid-errsquos dream of human-computer symbiosis

01org writes

Whoever works with a computer on a

daily basis at least for a few years

will soon realize that his own comput-

er resembles more and more to its

owner You share everything with your

computer your time (often even for 13

hours a day) your space (desktop)

your culture (bookmarks) your per-

sonal relationships (e-mails) your

memories (photo archives) your

ideas your projects etc To sum up a

computer with the passing of time

ends up looking like its ownerrsquos brain

[21]

Most importantly via transparency01org suggests that not only has the con-temporary Frankenstein come to pass butthat we are also part machine with a muchmore tenuous yet stronger bond than mere

mechanical or bioengineered implants

6 The Dream of Flows

ldquoUtopia is not the construction of a newcity utopia is the movement towards the

potential of working together with thecomplexity of an existing big city in orderto develop new forms of urban agenciesrdquo [22]

Even if postmodernism has come to beseen as a failed pastiche of styles and anuncritical refusal of commitment to any

original ideas ldquoanything goesrdquo the dreamof unfixedness of multiplicity and ofhybridity recurs [23] Einsteinrsquos relativityand Heisenbergrsquos uncertainty have becomeour own Even if we do not understandthe science we experience the reality

Artists have always tried to capture the


dynamic nature of the universe fromCubist fracturing to Rashomonic indeter-

minacy Computational media can beginto model it

One of the places where process is mostapparent is the constantly morphing cityKnowbotic Researchrsquos IO_dencies projectldquocombines physical local urban dynamics

with virtual network flows (the activi-ties of the participants in the net) Themovements towards lsquoan other cityrsquo [is]generated by manipulating operating andmodifying the urban flowsrdquo [24]

Ultimately IO_denciesrsquo questioning ofurbanity is an experiment to ldquodevelop new

forms of urban agencyrdquo But underlyingthis is the hypothesis that ldquocontemporarycities are being transformed by the[ir]informational fluxesrdquo and IO_dencies isboth a tool to dynamically map these flowsand to affect them

Borgesrsquos fable of a 11 map [25] is a car-tography of uselessness but with computa-tional media Knowbotic at tempts acartography of flows that is dynamic muchlike what it is representing If malleable itcan be affected by input from viewer-par-

ticipants (the I or input of IO) If it hasagency its cybernetic flow of feedback (theO or output of IO) affects the originalinput as well as the city itself As AndreasBroeckmann writes in a slightly differentcontext for Knowbotic ldquothe notion of per-

manent and uncontrollable change multi-ple influences complex sets of parametersetc are fundamental parameters of theirpracticerdquo [26]

7 The Dream of the Open Work

[A wo rk of art is] a complete and

closed form in its uniqueness as a bal-

anced organic whole while at the

same time constituting an open prod-

uct on account of its susceptibility to

countless different interpretations

which do not impinge upon its unadul-

terated specificity Hence every recep-

tion of a wo rk of a rt is bo th an

interpretation and a performance of it

because in every reception the work

takes on a fresh perspective

ndashUmberto Eco [27]

Eco argues that the reception of a work

of art makes it both performative andopen One of the strongest shifts of empha-

sis in the digital age has been on the pro-duction side and on the movement fromcreating finished works of art to creatingsystems for the production of ar tMuntadasrsquos The File Room (1994) is a pro-genitor in this regard and part icular ly

important for its explicit agenda using thecombination of the database and the net-work to allow any viewer-user to add com-ments or new information about issues ofcensorship This is a notoriously fraughtissue regarding coveragendashor lack thereofndashbymainstream media

Many other significant projects that usean open database have followed but notonly was The File Room one of the earliestof these projects but in its installationform with a single computer on a desk ina room lined with rows of filing cabinets

it was visually stunning and a proto-exam-ple of netinstallationndashworks for which theopen access of the Internet are integral andfor which the artist specifies at least onephysical interaction modality

8 The Dream of the Other

From Frankenstein to Eduardo Kacrsquos GFPBunny the technological other is often per-ceived as some kind of mutant Even the

ldquogoodrdquo mutantsndashWonder Woman Spider-man et alndashare portrayed as practicallyhuman despite their techno-biologicaldeformities The dream of the other how-ever is to somehow inhabit the psyche ofan otherndashto not merely deduce their feel-

ings but to experience themLynn Hershmanrsquos Lorna was the first

artist-produced interactive laser disc Itwas a kind of turning point for Hershmanmoving from her own performative inhab-itation of her alter ego Roberta Breitmoreto understanding the power of interactivity

and its sense of agency to allow others toldquoberdquo Lorna

Lorna is a middle-aged agoraphobicfearful of leaving her tiny apartment domi-nated by a television which is the site of Hersh-manrsquos installation Viewer-participants can

use a remote control to access chapters of abranching narrative of Lornarsquos life basedon the artifacts in the room It is a simplestructure where the ability to pick and

chose how to proceed allows the viewer-participant a sense of self-directed explo-rat ion that muta tes into a kind of

bondingunderstanding of Lorna

9 The Dream of a New Art

One of the most persistent tropes of the

intersection of technology and art is that itwill lead to a whole new art form just asmoving images eventually created cinemaThis may be particularly true of Internet-based art By creating a site explicitly dedi-cated to purely virtual art aumldarsquoweb pursued

this dream vigorously with a remarkableseries of projects by Jenny Holzer JuliaScher Muntadas Lawrence Wiener andDoug Aitken among others

Curated by Benjamin Weil aumldarsquowebwas specifically conceived along the linesof an atelier generally pairing established

artists with a remarkable team of digitalartists led by Vivian Selbo to workshop aproject over a number of months

Yet aumldarsquoweb is truly a case where thewhole is greater than the sum of its partsThe interface that interconnects the vari-

ous elements projects contexts links toother works commentary creation ofcommunity se lf-archiving balancebetween practical usability and encourag-ing exploration and even the attempts ate-commerce all combine to powerfully

imagine the contours of a new art formwhere it is not easy to point to a pre-exist-ing model

10 Hacking the Dream

Artists were among the earliest and mostactive participants to recognize the poten-tial of the Internetmdashcertainly long beforemost institutions and corporations Oneresult was to hack its capabilities for alter-

native purposes From Rachel BakerrsquosSainsbury TM to Electronic DisturbanceTheaterrsquos Floodnet there is a long historyof active contingents hacking the dreamsof e-commerce and universal surveillanceMongrelrsquos Natural Selection was set up asan alternative search engine Most of its

queries simply passed to a commercialsearch engine such as Google or AltaVistaand then presented the results as its ownIf however certain keywords were inputndash


generally to do with racendashNatural Selectionwould create a result set that linked toartist Web sites about that keyword Oftena casual browser might not realize that asite presented a very different worldviewthan he or she had been looking for

Many of these tactical media projects

get shut down by ldquolegal bugsrdquo [28] orstepped-up security features but as long asthe basic protocols of the Internet remainopen hacking the dreamndashartistically andpoliticallyndashwill remain viable Unfortu-nately continued openness is not a fore-gone conclusion and future dreams of

technology may be only what the corpora-tions and institutions can imagine whichwould be the biggest failure of all

REFERENCES

1 Randall Packer and Ken Jordan MultimediaFrom Wagner to Virtual Reality (Norton New York2001) is an excellent general resource for originaldocuments related to the Ten Dreams of Technology

2 See httpwwwsmalltalkorgalankayhtml forcontext of this oft quoted remark by Kay

3 Perry Hoberman Cathartic User Interface 1995httpwwwhobermancomperry

4 Ten is an arbitrary number and it should be clearthat every referred project exceeds its particularcategory

5 JCR Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis origi-nally published in IRE Transaction on Human Fac-tors in Electronics Volume HFE-1 pp 4-11 March1960 See httpmemexorglickliderpdf

6 Joseph Weizenbaum Eliza 1966 httpwebmiteduSTS001wwwTeam7elizahtml and httpwww-aii j s s ieli zael izahtml Ken RinaldoAutopoiesis 2000 httpwwwaccadohiostateedu~rinaldo

7 David Rokeby Lecture for lsquoInfo Artrsquo KwangjuBiennale 1996 httpwwwinterlogcom~drokebyinstallhtml

8 David Rokeby Giver of Names 1991-presenthttpwwwinterlogcom~drokebygonhtml

9 Rokeby [8]

10 Steven Johnson Emergence The Connected Livesof Ants Brains Cities and Software (New YorkScribner 2001) p 18

11 Paul Vanouse Persis tent Data Confidantehttppdcwalkerartorg Jane Prophet Technospherehttpwwwtechnosphereorguk Ken GoldbergJester httpshadowieorberkeleyeduhumor John Kli-ma Context Breeder httpwwwcityartscomrhi-zome

12 Johnson p 20

13 httpwwwmicatrcojp~christaWORKSindexhtml

14 Richard Wagner ldquoOutlines of the Artwork of theFuturerdquo in Multimedia [1]

15 Myron Krueger Live Interview with Jeremy Turn-er CTheory ARTICLES A104 January 23 2002httpwwwctheorynettext_filepick=328

16 httpwwwimmersencecomimmersence_homehtm

17 Char Davies Interview with Carol Gigliottihttpwwwimmersencecompublicationsnpara-doxa-Fhtml

18 Davies is currently in the process of portingOsmose and Eacutepheacutemegravere from high-end Silcon Graphicscomputers to the Playstation 2 platform

19 Quoted in Tom Standage The Victorian (NewYork Berkely Books 1998) p 104

20 Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz EcafeacuteManifesto httpwwwecafecom

21 httpwwwwalkerartorggallery9lifesharing

22 httpprixarsaecathistorynet1998E98net_1html

23 See Georgia OrsquoKeeffe Museum online sympo-sium 2001 httpwwwokeeffemuseumorgcenteronlinesymposiumhtml


25 Jorge Luis Borges ldquoOf Exactitude in Sciencerdquo inA Universal History of Infamy

26 Andreas Broeckmann Topologies in NetworksLecture for Recycling the Future Kunstrado Wienhttpthingatorfkunstrado pp 4-7 December1997 httpwwwvnl~andreastexts1997net-topologynet-topologyhtml

27 Umberto Eco The Poetics of the Open Work(1987) pp 48-50

28 Knowbotic Research Minds of Concern Breakhttpwwwnetartcommonsnetarticleplsidd=0204260311201 ampmode=thread and httpunited-hackhomeunixnetminds3

Steve Dietz is the Director of New MediaInitiatives at the Walker Art Center wherehe is also responsible for the programmingof the online ldquoGallery 9rdquo He is the princi-pal of YProductions which works withmuseums to architect digitally based cul-

tural programming He was formerly thehead of publications and new media initia-tives at the National Museum of AmericanArt where he established one of the earli-

est extensive museum Web sites on theInternet and co-produced the CD-ROM

ldquoNational Museum of American Artrdquowhich won the first prize in Arts and Cul-ture at the 1997 International MILIA Fes-tival He was also a member of theexecutive committee of the Coalition forthe Computer Interchange of Museum

Information (CIMI) and project coordina-tor for the museumrsquos participation in theMuseum Educational Site Licensing Pro-ject (MESL) He is currently on the boardof the Museum Computer Network (MCN)

514 Steve Dietz Selections

STEVE DIETZrsquoS SELECTIONS

Char Davies CanadaOsmose 1995

Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz United StatesElectronic Cafeacute 1984

Christa Sommerer and Laurent MignonneauA-Volve 1994-1995

David Rokeby CanadaGiver of Names 1991-present

01orglife_sharing

Knowbotic Research SwitzerlandIO_dencies 1996-1998

Antonio Muntadas SpainThe File Room 1994

Lynn Hershman United StatesLorna 1979-1982

Mongrel NetherlandsNatural Selection 1998

Benjamin Weil Vivian Selbo and Andrea Scott United Statesaumldarsquoweb 1996-1999

Steve Dietz Selections 515

Osmose (1995) is an immersive interactive virtual-reality environment installation with

3D computer graphics and interactive 3D sound a head-mounted display and real-time

motion tracking based on breathing and balance Osmose is a space for exploring the

perceptual interplay between self and world ie a place for facilitating awareness of

onersquos own self as consciousness embodied in enveloping space

ndashChar Davies

Char Davies Canada Osmose 19953D virtual reality immersive environmentldquoRocksrdquo Digital frame captures in real-time through HMD (Head-Mounted Display) during live performance of an immersive virtual environment


The Electronic Cafeacute Internationaltrade was founded in the Orwellian year of 1984 Actually ECI is the mother of

all cybercafes ECI is first and foremost a networked cultural research lab A unique international network of

multimedia telecommunications venues with over 40 affiliates around the globe For over a decade ECI has

functioned not only as a pioneer but as a leading multicultural community conducting ground-breaking

aesthetic research in the exploration of real-time networked collaborative multimedia environments

ndashwwwecafecom

Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz United StatesElectronic Cafe Network 1984 Mosaic Trans-mediahttpwwwecafecomCourtesy of Galloway and Rabinowitz


Christa Sommerer and Laurent MignonneauA-Volve 1994-1995Interactive computer installation


David Rokeby CanadaGiver of Names 1991-presentInstallationldquoA steadfastly orange-yellow bomb flag this syphilitic randy plenituderdquoCourtesy of David Rokeby


01orglife_sharingWeb sitehttpwww0100101110101101orgno copyright

The projects by the ldquoactivistsrdquo behind 0100101110101101org are focused on data access

document and archiving models and explore the political and cultural context of net-

worked communication The projects include the cloning and remixing of other artistsrsquo

and organizationsrsquo Web sites as well as the mapping tracking and surveillance of access

logs With the project life_sharing 0100101110101101org turned its site into public prop-

erty The site consisted of the organizationrsquos hard disk published in its entirety in html

format where it was visible and reproducible by anybody Issues of restricted and open

access to data are still a core element of this site and point to the complex politics be-

hind any form of data management


Knowbotic Research SwitzerlandIO_dencies Tokyo 1996-1998Interactive Installation

IO_dencies looks at urban environments analyzes the forces present in particular urban situations and

offers experimental collaborative interfaces for dealing with these force fields The aim however is not to

develop advanced tools for architectural and urban design but to create events through which it becomes

possible to rethink urban planning and construction IO_dencies unfolds the potentials that digital

technologies might offer towards connective participatory models of planning processes and of public

agency The challenge is to understand not only the new topologies of form and of presence but to tackle

the problems of agency and events in connective and translocal environments

ndashKnowbotic Research


Antonio Muntadas SpainThe File Room 1994Social sculpturehttpwwwthefileroomorgProduced by Randolph Street Gallery

The File Room began as an ideandashan abstract construction which developed into a prototype of an interactive

and open system locating and addressing the concept of cultural censorship The File Room is a social

sculpture first physically installed at the Chicago Cultural Center but remains an open interactive system

on the Internet for people to contribute information and dialogue as well as research censorship cases

Lynn Hershman United StatesLorna 1979-1982Interactive videodisk installation httpwwwlynnhershmancom

Lorna was the first interactive laser art disk and told the story of an agoraphobic woman

Viewers have the option of directing her life into several possible plots and endings Music by Terry Allen


Benjamin Weil Vivian Selbo and Andrea Scott United Statesaumldarsquoweb 1996-1999 Web sitehttpwwwadawebwalkerartorgImage of aumldarsquoweb (timeline)Courtesy of the Walker Art Center

aumldarsquoweb released its first online project in May 1995 It set out to offer an opportunity for artists to address the new

medium Involved artists had an interest in the public space and experience working with numerous media to

produce their work It was an online art site alternative to the ldquoonline galleriesrdquo and ldquovirtual museumsrdquo that were

popping up in the mid-1990s aumldarsquoweb presented and produced more than two dozen interactive Internet artworks

and projects designed for World Wide Web viewing Founded by Benjamin Weil aumldarsquoweb was headquartered in New

York When it closed in 1998 aumldarsquoweb was regarded as one of the premier sites for online art

Mongrel NetherlandsNatural Selection 1998Web sitehttpwwwmongrelxorgProjectNaturalImage above of Mongrel National HeritageCourtesy of Mongrel NH

Natural Selection was developed in April 1994 by Matthew Filofax and Graham Wang PhD

candidates in Social Engineering at Tirana University The Web site started as a guide to replace all

documents on the Internet promoting racism nationalism and eugenics with ldquomongrelisedrdquo

copies that would delete the originals


man-machine symbiosis from JosephWeizenbaumrsquos Eliza (1966) to Ken Rinal-

dorsquos Autopoiesis (2000) [6]At the same time as David Rokeby sug-

gests ldquoInteraction is banal We talk toeach other on the street We breathe in airmodify it chemically then breathe it backout to be breathed in by others We drivecars We make love We walk through a

forest and scare a squirrel I am lookingforward to a time when interaction in artbecomes as banal and unremarkable merely another tool in the artistic paletteto be used when appropriaterdquo [7]

Rokebyrsquos Giver of Names (1990-present)

is one of the most profoundly engagingdreams of cybernetic symbiosis in partbecause of his disinterest in a simplisticldquoclick and responserdquo notion of the interac-tive feedback loop [8] There is a great dealof computer research on issues of accurate

visual identification but Giver of Nameshas no such agenda It is a metaphor pro-ducer which invokes the awe of namingand the power of the word to create uni-verses The Giver of Names does not pro-vide a literal description of the object At

the same time it clearly does not generaterandom phrases As Rokeby writes hisintent is that ldquosufficient tension existbetween the object and the name given tochallenge the viewersrsquo preconceptions ofthe objects and draw them into specula-

tive explorationrdquo [9] The symbiotic feed-back loop infers that over the course ofmore than a decade the computer ldquolearnsrdquomore and more about the world and itsoblique almost Delphic utterances of ourmundane combinations of boot and rub-

ber-duck-and-ball objects also causes us toperceive the world differently Not a bad def-inition of art-or of a ldquopartnership that willthink as no human brain has ever thoughtrdquo

2 The Dream of Emergence

Teilhard de Chardin Marshall McLuhanPierre Levy George Dyson ArnoldSchwarzeneggerrsquos character in TerminatorThere is a veritable academy based on the

notion of networks as an extended or aug-mented nervous system out of which intelli-gence eventually and inevitably emergesEven Nathaniel Hawthorne saw this coming

By means of electricity the world of

matter has become a great nerve

vibr ating thousands of miles in a

breathless point of timehellipThe round

globe is a vasthellipbrain instinct with

intelligence

ndashThe House of Seven Gables 1851

As mysteriously and magically ldquointelli-gentrdquo as networks can seem however thecritical common denominator of emer-gent systems is as Steven Johnson puts itthat ldquoagents residing on one scale startproducing behavior that lies one scale

above them ants create colonies urbanitescreate neighborhoods simple pattern-recognition software learns how to recom-mend new books The movement fromlow-level rules to higher-level sophistica-tion is what we call emergencerdquo [10]

Artists have long created works outemergent simple rule-based systems PaulVanousersquos Personal Data Confidante JaneProphetrsquos Technosphere Ken GoldbergrsquosJester and John Klimarsquos forthcoming Rhi-zome interface to name just a few [11]

The role of the network in these projects isessentially to create an open system ofinput to promote adaptat ion withoutwhich complexity is ldquolike the intricatecrystals formed by a snowflake itrsquos a beau-tiful pattern but it has no functionrdquo [12]

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignon-neau are two of the most influential artistsworking consistently with emergent sys-tems A-Volve (1994-95) Life Spacie s(1997) Life Spacies II (1999) and Verbar-ium (1999) [13] With all of these works

relatively simple rules govern which virtualcreatures will ldquoa-volverdquo and the input forbehaviors is provided by viewer-partici-pants both at the physical installation ofthe project and via the Internet

With A-Volve for example visitor input

creates the initial shape of a virtual crea-ture and the longer that shape can survivethe more likely it is to be able to mate andreproduce There is no directly discerniblecorrelation however between a visitorrsquosactions and the evolution of the creatures

Importantly Sommerer and Mignonneauare not simply illustrating their ability towrite algorithms A-Volve and later pro-jects engage in issues of human-machineintercourse as well as the intersection of

the physical and virtual worlds

3 The Dream of Immersion

Whereas the public that representa-

tive of daily life forgets the confines of

the auditorium and lives and breathes

now only in the artwork which seems

the wide expanse of the whole World

ndashRichard Wagner Outlines of the Art-

work of the Future [14]

From Wagner to Daguerrersquos panoramicdioramas to James Turrellrsquos Roden Craterartists have dreamed of artworks in which

the viewer is totally immersed So-calledvirtual reality is one technological manifes-tation of this dream One of the earliestpioneers in this regard was Myron Kruegerwho created what he called ldquoresponsiveenvironmentsrdquo and coined the term ldquoartifi-

cial realityrdquo Regarding the efficacy of whatcame to be called virtual reality Kruegerhad this to say in an interview

It is true that todayrsquos virtual reality

provides very limited tactile feedback

almost no proprioceptive feedback (as

would be provided by walking on a

sandy beach or on rough terrain) rare

opp ortunit ies to sme ll and litt le

mobility However it is just getting

started Criticizing a new idea because

it is not yet fully realized seems unrea-

sonably impatient On that basis the

caves at Lascaux would never have

been painted because we did not have

a full palette and could not animate in

three dimensions Give us a few cen-

turies and then revisit this complaint

[15]

Not quite a few centuries later one ofthe most important and successful heirsworking with immersive environments is

Char Davies and her works Osmose (1995)and Eacutepheacutemegravere (1998) [16] For her envel-opment is core and at the same time anti-Cartesian

For a long time I have been interested

in conveying a sense of being

enveloped in an all-encompassing all-

surrounding space a subjective

embodied experience that is very dif-

ferent from the Cartesian notion of

absolute emty abstract xyz space

[17]



































01org writes














[21]



































































REFERENCES









9 Rokeby [8]



12 Johnson p 20




























01orglife_sharing












ndashChar Davies








ndashwwwecafecom



















































































01org writes














[21]



































































REFERENCES









9 Rokeby [8]



12 Johnson p 20




























01orglife_sharing












ndashChar Davies








ndashwwwecafecom











































































































REFERENCES









9 Rokeby [8]



12 Johnson p 20




























01orglife_sharing












ndashChar Davies








ndashwwwecafecom























































01orglife_sharing












ndashChar Davies








ndashwwwecafecom























































ndashChar Davies








ndashwwwecafecom























































ndashwwwecafecom

















































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