Note: Article
appears in both French and English. Only the English has been copied.
Developing the software and
hardware for interactive installations and artificial perception systems for
two decades, Canadian Media Artist David Rokeby has had much occasion to
reflect upon the nature of subjectivity, control and disappearance in
electronic art. In his interactive works, he invites the viewer to actively
engage with the technologies. “Each participant is an interaction,” says
Rokeby, “receives the sensation of responsibility; each has the ability to
respond.” Such expressions generate a seemingly open-ended situation were
meaning is produced by and is contingent upon the participation of the visitor,
and were the interactors subjective experience becomes the focus of the
artwork. Not all of Rokeby’s works are interactive, however. Some, based on
surveillance and tracking systems, even appear to reinstate the traditional
viewing experience as they position the visitor in the role of the surveillant,
or as the person viewed. Whether engaging in Rokeby's interactive works or
subjected to his monitoring systems, one is prompted to pose important
questions about new technologies. Are these electronic creations neutral and
objective? Does the artist-programmer, like the anonymous writer scripter,
strive to relinquish authorial control? How do Rokeby's electronic works relate
to former conceptions of anonymity in art and culture?
Several decades prior to the
advent of electronic media art, avant-garde artists like Marcel Duchamp, whom Rokeby
claims is "the first interactive artist,"2 adopted various strategies
of anonymity, renouncing the authorial role of the artist. Intentionally
elusive, Duchamp adopted various pseudonyms, the most famous being. that of his
female alter ego, Rose Selavy. As infamous iconoclast, he consistently
exhibited a blatant irreverence for the artist as a persona constructed by the
culture industry. Most importantly, in rejecting the role of omniscient,
authoritative author, Duchamp assumed the position of the anonymous or
impersonal writer. He described this as a mediumistic role. Wishing to re move
himself, as self-conscious subject, from the creative process s, he indicated
that art should follow the direction of the writer Stephane Mallarme. Similar
strategies of anonymity, with regard to the writing process, were theorized
later in the century by post-structuralists as the "death of author"
and the birth of the writer-scripter.
As an anonymous or impersonal
writer, Duchamp produced a variety of works, words and gestures capable of being
read as a network of recurring and self-reflexive signs that interweave,
intersect and dialogue with each other.
Duchamp's sign system spawns an
indeterminate and indefinable space that is neither presence nor absence, and
that posits neither a position nor a negation. This is a conceptual space in
which readings are both simultaneously either-or and neither-nor; and where a
myriad of inscriptions and erasures of signs trace a field without origin and
where there is a perpetual fluctuation between the creating or becoming of
meaning and the state of "forgetting." How is one to name such a sign
system: writing or scripture, a play of difference, simply, the "modem
allegory?" Perhaps Duchamp's own cryptic notes about an "allegory on
'forgetting'," about an "allegory of oblivion,"3 would best
characterize it. Like the modem allegory which defies the simple correlation
between one set of signs and a second order of meaning, in Duchamp's complex
network of signs, there is no shared code, no privileged signifier, no stable
signified, no fixed referential object, and no definitive totalizing and
unitary meaning. It reflects, to use Walter Benjamin's words, "an
appreciation of the transience of things" which, he noted, was "one
of the strongest impulses in allegory.''4 One can certainly call such an
open-ended allegory "interactive," as the production of meaning is
contingent upon the viewer's active engagement as reader of the cultural signs.
In Duchamp's own words: All in all, the creative act is not performed by the
artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world
by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his
contribution to the creative act.5 In hindsight, one understands how Duchamp's
strategies of anonymity served to dismantle the illusion of totalizing meaning
and unitary truth statements, created by an originary or transcendent subject
whose name is "author." At the same time, his stance as anonymous
writer opened new avenues for the individual viewer-reader who, in effect, was
assigned a primary role in the "creation" of the art work. If such
strategies were emblematic of a shift in paradigm, it is quite apt to
reconsider the issue of anonymity in light of electronic art. By contrasting
David Rokeby's notions of interactivity, and especially the authorial role,
with the Duchampian model, one can recognize that, once again, a shift in
paradigm has occurred.
Interactive
Systems
In such early interactive works
as Very Nervous System (1983-91), David
Rokeby provides the visitor with the opportunity to transform his/her body into
a musical instrument. Standing in front of a video camera, the visitor's bodily
movements are captured; an image processor feeds the
message of this motion to a
computer, synthesizer and sound system. Integrated into this closed electronic
circuit, the visitor is able to have every gesture translated into repeatable
sounds. Rokeby explains that Very Nervous System is significant in that it
"transform[s} the interactor's
awareness of his or her body."6 Indeed, as one produces
the musical sounds, one becomes conscious not only of one's bodily actions in
time and space, but also of the interconnections between our physical gestures,
the act of hearing, and the electronic sound. Most evidently, this kind of art
experience differs radically from that of the traditional observer of an object
of display who, even when intellectually or emotionally engaged in the artwork,
remains a decarnalized eye. Plugged into
the Electronic circuit of Very Nervous
System, one is not a neutral body where the senses and the mind are
relegated to distinct domains. As a veritable cyborg one no longer distinguish
between mind and body and technology. It
is evident that for each interactor, the self-conscious multi-sensorial
engagement with Very Nervous System is personal and unique. Hence, just as in
Duchamp's "allegory on forgetting," there is no meaning predetermined
by the artist. Nor does the interactor, as both choreographer and musician,
encounter the artist's subjective voice. Or is the artist's disappearance just
illusory? Though Very Nervous System becomes a vehicle by which the interactor
discovers one's "self' in time/space, as Rokeby explains, "[t]he set
of possibilities [is] very, constrained." In fact, "[t]he sounds/
music created by Very Nervous System carr[y] a very strong signature, despite
the interactivity.''7 Un1ike the (post)modern impersonal writer or medium,
Rokeby, as artist-programmer, decidedly re-establishes
authorial control: [I]n attempting to create a system in which I disappear more
effectively, l am not exactly trying to disappear. In fact, one could equally
convincingly declare that I am actually playing god, trying in a more abstract
way to be profoundly present and controlling, relinquishing control of the con
tent, but tightening my grip on the processing, delivery and contextualization
of this content. I propose that this sort of control can twist any content to
one's expressive will while appearing to be open and "objective." So
I am looking into this paradox of disappearance.
The question of the artist's
disappearance is indeed paradoxical. Integrated into Very Nervous System, one
does not sense the artist's presence, let alone his control. Instead, his
computer-based system appears to operate like a neutral mirror, like a medium
for self-reflection. However, as Rokeby warns us, such electronic works are
neither neutral nor objective: I have never really felt that the computer is
objective. In fact one might say that the reason I have been pursuing this
angle in my work has been to find out, by creating systems that are as
objective as possible, how impossible it is to create a truly objective system,
By the end of my time working with Very
Nervous System, this process became very conscious.
In subsequent works, Rokeby
openly ascribed subjectivity to his electronic creations. For example, Giver of
Names (1998) was actually "intended to be opinionated, biased,
subjective." To the gallery visitor, however, this subjectivity is not
immediately apparent. Rather, the computer-based installation assumes an aura
of objectivity and anonymity, except perhaps for an array of colorful objects
scattered on the floor, some of which are used children's toys. In the center
of this cheerful display, there is an empty pedestal. A video camera is
positioned in front of it. On the periphery of this scene, one notes a computer
and a monitor - presumably the "giver of names." One soon discovers
that this is, in fact, an intelligent system. Like a young child, the
computer is able to formulate words and sentences upon receiving certain
visual stimuli. It is the visitor's task to provide this stimulation by placing
a colored object on the pedestal. Giver of Names then translates this visual
input into an array of words associated with the general shape and color of the
object, and displays them on the screen. It is able to organize the data
according to linguistic formulations and hierarchies such as synonyms,
homonyms, homophones, family resemblances between words, and so on. With these
words, the computer subsequently proceeds to formulate a flow of grammatically
correct sentences for us to read. How does the visitor, then, react to this
intelligent system? The grammatically correct sentences exhibited on the monitor
by Giver of Names can be deemed nonsensical, sometimes poetic, and, on
occasion, even shocking when, like a child, it
inadvertently blurts out something rude or offensive. On the other hand,
reading a sentence (e.g., "Lemons, more eyeless than other beady sectors,
would par don no optical drops") may trigger associations in the mind of
the reader, which coincide with current thought patterns, personal frames of
reference, one's cultural baggage. In effect, Rokeby's intelligent Giver of
Names, like Duchamp's allegory, makes explicit what many artworks obscure: that
one always encounters an art object (any object for that matter) as a mediated
subject. There can, therefore, be no universal viewing experience; there can be
no recognition of an a priori meaning set up by an authorial voice; there is no
meaning that precedes one's interaction. Meaning lies within us, in one's
"creative act."
While one can reasonably argue
that production of meaning is contingent upon the interactor's act of
interpretation, there is a major difference between reading an array of
cultural signs in the Duchampian allegory, and words and sentences produced by
the knowledge base of a computer. No doubt, however, Duchamp would. Have
greatly admired such a word-making machine, as he was fascinated with the
inherent power of words to create meaning.
In this regard, it is also
noteworthy to recognize how Rokeby designed
the "intellect" of Giver of Names. Not wishing to have this
sophisticated database operate as "a self-portrait" of the artist, he
wanted to discover "what sort of subjectivity would emerge if the Internet was one's sole source
of knowledge of the world." Such a neutral knowledge base, one might
think, produces language that is totally objective, giving
free rein to the reader interpreter. Rokeby disagrees: Giver of Names is
extremely subjective, precisely because it has been forced out of the vacuum of
pure binary feedback that is digital processing. This is true of all my work
going back to Very Nervous System. The vacuum demands violation. By being
forced to operate on imperfectly perceived objects, and forced to express in
that perverse construction called (English) language, it falls out of digital
paradise.
As such, his electronic creations have the ability to
surprise the artist: I like to be surprised and engaged by my own work.
Particularly in the very self-referential world of programming, one feels a
kind of claustrophobia...one is living inside one's own models.... The medium
requires it because it actually offers such extreme levels of control that you
have to work extremely hard to invent satisfying ways of relinquishing enough
of it to find a balance (as an artist).
To the visitor, the language spoken by Giver of Names may
appear arbitrary, accidental, surprising and even solipsistic in its
unawareness of the interactor. For
Rokeby, such "framing" is not generally understood, however:
Computers and software are
conventionally seen to be transparent channels through which content is
expressed and exchanged. But all of my experience with programming indicates
that programming acts shift the experience of the experience of the content. (I
know...a strange formulation.) Programmers define aspects of the user's
experience of being through their programming decisions and constructs.
In his most recent work,
n-cha(n)t (2001), David Rokeby expands the capabilities of Giver of Names
further by anthropomorphizing the intelligent ma chine into a community of
seven computers linked by a network. When one enters the darkened space
inhabited by the society of computers, one hears them chanting together.
Absorbed in this communal act, they ignore the visitor who, in a sense,
intrudes into their cerebral space. The visitor can distinguish each computer
by the gender and age of a human ear displayed on its screen. When spoken to,
the computer will cup its ear and listen 10 the visitor's voice. While it
attempts to recognize (and
misrecognize) the words and sentences it hears, it will project
a finger pressed into the ear. Like Giver of Names, every computer, upon
receiving sensorial stimuli (this time aural), will respond by formulating word
associations from their respective databases. These computers, however, are
actually able to utter a flow of words with their individualized synthesized
voices.
Chatting with visitors results
in a partial or complete disruption of the collective chant. Even while
responding to the visitors, the computers silently relay their newly acquired
words to the others. "The network chatting," says Rokeby, "is
not heard, but floats as a subtext behind the speeches that each machine makes.
There is not really any kind of dialogue between machines. They are not
communicating so much as communing."
Depending on how much a
particular computer is stimulated by the visitor's voice and the computer
chatting, it might become overwhelmed; it thus covers its ear with a hand,
indicating it wants no further input. As the verbal stimulation provided by the
visitors recedes, the seven computers gradually synchronize their
"individual internal 'states of mind'," until they share the same
stream of verbal association. Not scripted in any way, "one machine does
not tell the others what sentence to speak. The identical sentences arise when
all seven computers have gotten to a point where their internal knowledge bases
are identically stimulated, and they therefore say the same things." As
the consensus among the computers grows, they find, once again, a kind of
equilibrium in the form of a unified chant.
As this electronic community
chats and chants, one can recognize to what extent it resembles us and, more
significantly, how much it differs. "I am not trying to do any deep
modelling of human social groups with this work," Rokeby admits: My
entities are far too crude to be useful simulacra of real people. They
represent nothing more than themselves...indentured slaves of this particular
programmer, granted a fraction of some freedom they are utterly incapable of
desiring.' Indeed, human social groups are beyond simulation. In his
observations of intelligent systems, Peter Weibel has argued that "[t]he
highest level of simulation lies in attaining immunity from simulation itself.
(A copy without original, a clone without body.)"9 One can recognize how
the fluidity and intricacies of even a single human identity ultimately render
it immune from simulation.
This said, Rokeby's
"indentured slaves" reveal two significant points: To begin with,
their state of total oblivion renders them unconscious of their sensorial
qualities as perception systems, of their ability to chat, chant - and also of
their capacity to enchant, even the artist: The most beautiful moments are just
before the chant is achieved.... You hear in the community the consensus grow
as the semantic and syntactic gestures of each computer converge.... The sound
of the seven synthesized computer voices sound much more real as a group than
any individual computer sounds. The sound of the hushed chanting is very spooky
and somewhat primal.
Perhaps their primal chant is so
enchanting precisely because! it projects back to us an inversion of our own
human complexity. Another important element is also at play in this work.
Despite their primal state, these technologies do exert authority over us.
Rokeby cautions that "[e]xplicitly interactive pieces often obscure the
degree to which they constrain the viewer to a limited set of possibilities....
The interactive system subtly displaces some of the subjectivity of the viewer
into its own mechanism."
One might, well argue that one must always negotiate
certain parameters, whether walking through an architectural space, or speaking
through a given language and received ideas or concepts. Although these
constraints are real, Rokeby emphasizes that with technology there is a
difference "in speed and magnitude of suppleness, complexity and relative
invisibility." If interactive systems conceal their power to invade and
control human subjectivities remarkably well, then Rokeby's surveillance and
tracking systems make this phenomenon somewhat
more visible.
Surveillance and
Tracking Systems
Watch (1995) provides the viewer
with a live processed video stream, which serves as a metaphorical picture of
the power of technology to subsume human subjectiviliies. In the installation
space, one can passively watch manipulated images of unwitting passersby,
situated in public sections of the gallery or in exterior pllblic areas.
Captured by surveillance cameras and altered by the perception system, the
manipulated images of people and place are projected on two screens, like
mirror projections. On the first, the only stable images one sees are of static
people and of the surrounding area. Though filmed in real time, these images
give the effect of longexposure photography. As people move across the screen,
their images become blurred. In the other mirror projection, this process is
inverted. People are clearly visible when in motion; and they are projected as
floating outlines on a black ground when they are still.
While we, as gallery
surveillants, watch these apparently anodyne images, one is able to hear the
sounds of time: the ticking of a watch, a clock, a heartbeat, as well as light
breathing. Sometimes, we hear a camera shutter as the projections are
processed. Sound is not, however, the principal effect. Nor is an active
engagement on our part solicited. Indeed, as Rokeby states: I want the dominant
relationship between the public and this installation to be one of "watching,"
not acting. The artwork itself remains active, a live perceptual filter through
which the audience watches1. The system has embedded itself into the
feedback-loop of1perception, transforming the process of looking. What is most
interesting to me about this transformation oflookingis that it invariably also
involves a transformation of the apparent "meaning" of what is being
watched.10 What is this meaning? The surveillance cameras and monitoring
systems at work in Watch- as well as other related works like Watch and
Measured (2000) and Gu1ardian Angel (2001) - transform the visitor into
anonymous surveillants who, like voyeurs, are positioned to secretly watch.
Inevitably, surveillance works such as these readily prompt one to pose ethical
questions regarding invasion of privacy on the one hand and the necessity for
public security and law enforcement on the other. Moreover, in the context of
an art gallery, one is futher prompted to question our role as surveillants, or
as persons viewed.
So then, what exactly is one
watching? One sees how the "objective' camera and projection system
manipulate the original image of people and things. "Due to the nature of
the processing," says Rokeby, "these images already show an
interpretive -bias; the processing adds weight and apparent significance to the
initially banal live video source imagery."" The point is well made.
The monitoring system captures and distorts a surface image according to the design (here
of the artist-programmer), and furtively lures the surveillant, positioned as a
distanced viewer, to submit to this biased view.
Watching the projected images produced by the monitoring
systems, one might also draw parallels with interactive systems such as Very
Nervous System, Giver of Names and n-cha(n)t. Do they not also entail a kind of
tracking system, whether through the video camera or the microphone? Are these
perception systems not also capable of "capturing" us as in advertent
specimens, and "distorting" our words, gestures, body image, and by
extension, our motivations? Rokeby concurs. '
Encountering Rokeby's interactive works and perception systems, one
recognizes that belief in the anonymity of the artist-programmer and in the
objectivity of his "indentured slaves" is a dangerous fiction.
"Anonymity in my work," he explains, "is actually an exploration
of the near impossibility of disappearing. [...] A computer, in my opinion,
takes things past the vanishing point. I am very interested in attempting to
disappear, but the struggle to dis appear is different from actually
disappearing." In contrast to earlier manifestations of anonymity which
signaled: the breakdown of monolithic truths pronounced by the universal
subject, media artist David Rokeby alerts us to a very different condition: the
relinquishment of authorial control is no longer a real possibility in the
electronic age, and one would greatly benefit by becoming aware of this fact.
Ernestine Daubner teaches in the
Art History Department of Concordia University and is a postdoctoral fellow at
Universite du Quebec a Montreal. As a researcher in contemporary art and new
technologies, she collaborates with le Groupe de recherche en arts mediatiques
(GRAM) and le Centre interuniversitaire en arts mediatiques (CIAM).
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