Performance of JMZ Tunnel at NYU Television Center
Following the score below for one of my sound walks, Arturo Vidich, performed the JMZ Tunnel at the Canal Street Station in the hallway of the television center at NYU.
I ain’t got no body, calendar and mood boards
Schedule:
10 weeks (last two weeks of the semester are reserved for finishing, dealing with lose ends and unexpected problems, making the documentation website, and preparing the piece for the show)
week 1(by Feb 9) Have Reliable Xbee communication between website and “body” the last run failed after the first few commands were sent. Determine what kind of interaction design should occur between user and body
week 2(by Feb 16) Design and start amassing parts for “body”, should it be able to walk, should it be modular, a space, I don’t know
week 3(by Feb 23) Make trial run (maybe send it to canada and use it to play with sister, or give it to Ben)
week 4(by March 2)revisions/reiteration
week 5(by March 9) one more exchange/test
week 6(by March 16) time to order new/more parts if necessary, change control interface if necessary
week 7(by March 23)next test
week 8(by March 30)recap, re-assesment
week 9(by April 6)build up the project again
week 10(by April 13)document/source code
(my dates don’t seem to coincide with the academic calendar, I don’t care enough to fix them, earlier is better)
The three projects that I feel are successful that are related to mine are the first three slides.
The first slide is a scene from the movie “surrogates” which while being a product of the holywood machine, does have it’s successes. I particularly liked one part in the movie when the antagonist went clubbing in the body of a 20 year old british pop star looking body and met a woman, who was kindof a typical holywood blonde. They liberally flung themselves (or maybe just one of them did), off the side of a building to no harm. They turned into an alley way, and right before the fateful moment of coitus, they were murdered. The young man turned out to be a wheel chair bound decrepit, and the blonde was a clinically overweight man.
It was nice in that the characters were engaging each other as androids and also as the characters in human society that they were representing. Of course the scene was super successful because it was actually played by a sultry hollywood blonde and a young man that looks like a british pop star. Which is further amusing on account of all the recursion, us dealing with actors in the first place and so on.
The second slide is of Golan Levin’s Opto Isolator and Double Take. These robots are following an algorithm that dictates their actions, but they have incredible personality and character. Even of they were commandeered by any stranger they would still be very much driven by the nature of their bodies. And that is one of the aspects of this project that is driving me most, the desire to experience, no matter how remotely, existence in another body,
Next is Adrianne Wortzel’s Kiru from Camouflage Town. Her work centers around robotics and theater. This makes it particularly interesting in that she works on developing specific characters. People from the internet could control Kiru and engage with visitors in the museum, but only through his voice, and body.
The rest of the images are aesthetic inspiration, not conceptual. Although the lunahods and astronaughts whose bodies are monitored down to the heartbeat and sent out into space on behalf of humanity, are quite poignant. The ones on the bottom with men in bug like masks is also an art project, but I don’t remember it’s name, if you do, please write to yud dot sofy at gmail dot com.
I ain’t got no body, continued
I ain’t got no body, continued
How can this be done with love?
The body implemented would be specific in it’s composition, a character by virtue of it’s body, the way a cat is by default different from a snail. But the structure underneath it would be modular and multi purpose. Hopefully allowing me to continue on a path of development for a long run to come.
What: One or more “bodies” to jack into from the net, a net, etc. Possibly even, (and this has always been a fantasy of mine) a space. What does it mean about our experience of the world if our body is mapped to a space?
When: First Plateau: Develop protocol and plan for documentation etc.
Why: I always wondered what it would be like to be a carp, so flat and smooth, on the bottom of the sea floor. How do we map a carp’s body to that of a human?
Because I feel empty and I want to look at everything in such depth that maybe I will finally prove or disprove the reality of anything that I perceive. At least for the benefit of my own peace of mind, if nothing else.
To exacerbate the abyss of the other, push to the limit any indication that they really exist. Trying to mediate life with a mechanical process. Trying to mechanize deconstruct and decontextualize everything.
Who: Anyone with internet, should it be p2p? All access all the time, peep show 2.0 or something more specific you have to make an appointment for etc?
How: Serially enabled devices can be controlled from the internet, we will see which ones and how after some market research and analysis.
I am proposing to develop an open interface for telepresence, with some kind of modular infrastructure. Perhaps it will take the form of something like the chat roulette but with physically present “bodies”. Its related to teledildonics too, and all the beautiful notions of the passion where you give your body over to the process, except that process is embodied by other people, close ones, strangers.
I accept all assignments!
My own perceived strengths:
Some modicum of craftsmanship, some ability to make things work and bring them to a close if not a polish when push comes to shove, can organize workflow, know my limits
Weaknesses:
Poor language and communication abilities, laziness, don’t know my limits
I ain’t got no body
Open this page if you have a body around.
Open this page if you want to control a body.
The Body:
How it works:
You control the body by pushing buttons from the control page.
It writes the commands to a text file.
The local page polls the file and writes the commands to the puppet.
The audio and visual is transmitted through skype.
Why?
Who doesn’t want telepresence? And if you can have any body, why not have a 360 degree moving racecar body with pimped out led wheels?
A Ghost Writes
Final ICM Project
A Ghost Writes is a project in materializing messages sent over the ether into a time based site specific experience. We gave the printing machine an algorithmic “personality”.
The computer is…
A medusa
It can be anything and everything
Primordial electronic ooze
Ancient mechanical technologies have a singular purpose.
For instance the typewriter is used to write, it is rooted in a physical experience. A Ghost Writes celebrates undisrupted long distance communication by allowing the word to become flesh.
doesn’t really work without hardware, but the page is there.
WoWiWa in the Flesh
respectively: la jetee time machine, bowflex full body toning gym, 12 monkeys interrogation device, davinci telepresence operator, surrogates sim chair
Who
The Machine, The Cloud of Communal Cognition, and YOU
What
Real World Radio Stations that also stream to the internet, simulated 3d reality, a full body interface, a singular, human consciousness.
When
Its happening all the time, but you can’t be part of it, or affect it unless you plug in.
How
Thoughts
There always seems to be this substitution of senses, sensory input and awareness to achieve telepresence. Why is it always looking like this:
and not like this:
you know he’ll jump up and catch you if you even think of getting close.
Why does he seem so powerful (other than the fact that he’s batman)? What is it about having extra body interfaces that makes us wary of our own fragility?
Psychic Friends Network
Presentation of Psychic Friends Network, a slide essay
GhostWriter
And so, for the documentation
We managed to parse incoming emails from the gmail account. Almost managed to send that out to leds representing solenoids on the typewriter’s keys (we only seem to be able to send the first one out). We ordered solenoids! That up next!
On the future of the evolution of the piece;
If there is a mechanical object, that receives messages from the ether, If the object could vocalize itself, what would it say on the subject?
The Automat, an architectural/gastronomical site of barrier fetishism
Wikipedia says that one of the main attractors of rubber fetishism is ” …perhaps that the garment forms a “second skin” that acts as a fetishistic surrogate for the wearer’s own skin. ”
This has many parallels and relations to technoculture and the myriad forms of mediation that it provides.
The Automat is a particularly fascinating materialization of this behavioral pattern, because it claims to serve “BAMN! provides American comfort food that just makes you happy.” The food is not prepared automatically, its made by a chef directly behind the little glass boxes containing the food. But it provides a sterile skin in between the consumer and the restauranteur, and allows us to engage in a dance of technically mediated food obtaining. It exists solely for the facilitation of said ritual.
I was going to observe interactions at the Bamn! Automat on St.Marks place, but to my great disappointment, apparently it has been out of business since March 2009. I have partook in it’s ritual for the two years that it was on St.Marks however, and so will write up this blog post from memory.
People come up to the Automat at all hours of the night drunkenly dropping quarters in its eagerly awaiting, ever ready gapping little change collectors.
They always seem to be happily surprised to receive their food. It’s like a little game, a little dare, drop your change in the hole, push the button, will you get the corn dog?
It has happy blinky lights, a seemingly mechanical interface and the promise of fresh food on the other end. It’s an arcade like interaction between consumer and producer.
There are clear borders, consumers on one side, a wall of glass bricks with doors full of food, and the producer on the other side. We don’t even see them. Our money goes directly to the machine of the institution, the architecture. Everything is divorced and clean cut. It’s safe in a way, no pressure to behave in a sociable manner, we each have our boxes, and in our boxes we are free.
The most shocking moment I had at the Automat, was one night, in between parties, when a giddy group and I stopped there for a snack on the way. As sounds of chatter and lights of the arcade like place blurred and whizzed around my consciousness, I turned away from the warm faces of my friends to get a croquette. I happened to have turned into a nose to glass position with the croquette box, and at that precise moment, a giant (out of scale with it’s environment), unmistakably human, hand popped into the enclosure, placed a croquette there, and promptly removed itself.
There are some nice images from the movie dark city of the hand in the automat. The whole scene that is comes from is worth watching, as it is using the spacial politics of the automat to expose the feelings of urban instability and metaphysical instability of the main character.
It was like a moment of experiencing the sublime, or the uncanny, or realizing you are having a lucid dream. It upset my entire world to see that hand, it implied organic relationships I was totally not ready to accept as reality at that moment.
The Automat creates a beautiful, organized technologically controlled world, that not only provides an environment that harkens to arcades and caissoes, but also rewards you for playing, with home cooking.
The Croquette:
ghostwriter
“Ghostwriter”
The computer is…
A medusa
It can be anything and everything
Primordial electronic ooze
Ancient mechanical technologies have a singular purpose.
For instance the typewriter is used to write, it is rooted in a physical experience. Ghostwriter celebrates undisrupted long distance communication by allowing the word to become flesh.
