if not(you&me)=>(void)

(Deep Belief Network – Image asimovinstitute.org/neural-network-zoo)

Jeudi 6 octobre 2016 16h.
Présentation Performance
if not(you&me)=>(void)
Muriel Piqué & Annie Abrahams

Colloque international
Narrativité & Intermédialité
Une initiative du RIRRA 21, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier – Université  Justus Liebig Giessen.
Salle des colloques 1 – Saint-Charles, Montpellier.

L’internet rend l’information disponible sous différentes formes partout et à tout moment. L’intermédialité a pénétré la vie de tous les jours. Nous ne pensons plus seulement avec les mots, mais aussi avec l’image, le son, le corps. Le récit ne se joue plus seulement dans une intertextualité mais se construit dans l’entre, présent ou absent, composé ou recomposé par les performeurs(ses) et/ou les publics.

“Penser le commun en tant que relation, plutôt que comme espace d’externalités; le penser en termes d’intra-activité. Ne plus considérer les individus comme constitués dès le départ et indépendamment du commun. Individus et commun sont des agencements de relations, des intensifications ou pertes de vitesse relationnelles.” D’après Ontologie relationnelle et pensée du commun de Cléo Collomb.

Filed under: Conference / lecture, Of interest, Performance, intermédialité, intra-action, Muriel Piqué, narrativité, networks

Tableaux vivants – I can’t do it alone

 

31/08 2016
18h. – 21h. Tableaux vivants – I can’t do it alone
An interactive participative networked installation
A construction of tableaux vivants, of images more or less alive.
and an Artist Talk,
Kulturni Dom Šempas, Šempas 29, 5261 Šempas.

In the frame of a R.o.R. residency with BridA.
Supported by: Mestna občina Nova Gorica
With special thanks to Krajevna skupnost Šempas

In the installation using three networked computers, two webcams, a projector and simple daily life objects like vegetables, plants, toys, colloured fabrics, sponges and their own bodies people can create images together. A third person will decide on what to capture of this co-creation. Together they will discuss and decide what images among all those captured will be interesting enough to be archived and entered in the Tableaux Vivants collection.

… / (1) a time to explain – starting with a fixed image: a composition / (2) a time of action – the moving image captured in stills by someone of the public – ending with a fixed image / (3) a time to select among the screen captures – a time to discuss / …

co-creating, discussing aesthetics, humans can be objects too

Text en Slovène, Photo’s, screencaptures on flickr
.pdf with preparation instructions

Filed under: Conference / lecture, Net art, Of interest, Performance, BridA, networked installation, tableaux plus ou moins vivants

Positive Awkwardness ?

When watching https://vimeo.com/156829538 Avatar as Prosthesis 1; an interview Gretta Louw did with the online therapist and trainer Kate Anthony from the Online Therapy Institute in Second Life, I was fascinated by the relation between the two avatars.

So odd to listen to a very interesting conversation on the potential and strength of using avatars in psychological treatment while watching two lady avatars completely absorbed in their own being, voicing thoughts in a conversation not looking at each other, giving the impression of being shy, occasionally blinking their eyes as if wanting to catch another gaze…

Gretta and Kate talked about how “being in the virtual, not being face-to-face” makes communication free-er (this is called the disinhibition effect*) and how the Institute uses this in their therapies.
Would the virtual be so strongly connected to the “real” person that the face-to-face even has to be avoided in the virtual. Is this why they never look at each other? or is it programmed into Second Life as a special female property?

They also talk about the rubber hand illusion, the avatar as an extension and/or a prosthesis and the wheelchair avatar as a virtual activist.
If the avatar is a prosthesis, what is it a prothesis for? I asked Gretta in an email.

*The Online disinhibition effect is a loosening or complete abandonment of social restrictions and inhibitions that would otherwise be present in normal face-to-face interaction during interactions with others on the Internet. This effect is caused by many factors, including dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority.

Filed under: Of interest, avatars, disinhibition effect, Gretta Louw, prosthesis, slickness of the virtual

Distant Feeling(s) #2

Testing the interface July 24 2016

On the 26 of July 2016
Lisa Parra in Los Angeles USA,
Daniel Pinheiro in Lisabon Portugal and
Annie Abrahams in Montpellier France
gathered in an online séance trying to experience each other’s presence with closed eyes.

Distant Feeling(s) #2
Online : 21h45
Duration 30 min.
Livestreamed directly to reSense #1
Thanks to Olivia Jack (artist and webrtc developer)

Berlin :  20h30 (after BadaboomBerlin BadaBodypaint)
reSense [movement, performance, technology, art] Festival
SPEKTRUM – art science community
Bürknerstraße 1
12047 Berlin

“What are we? When are we? Where are we?
We, we we we is what?”

When meeting online we face a lack of references that usually define the perception of ‘being’ somewhere at a given time. This object aims at discussing, within the possibilities of networked performance, the mediation itself by removing the fundamental sense that allows connectedness to happen. In a mainly visual rationalized culture we question the following: what are we then left with?

With a sense of proximity ? Intentions of provoking a telematic coordination of movements diluted into a journey of each individual approach on experiencing a shared moment in time? What time?!

Rules for a Distant feeling(s) encounter:
– put the timer on 30 min
– close your eyes
– try feeling the others presence, try provoking their presence, find out what is present
– when timer goes off we open our eyes and just watch for a minute.

Overview : videos, photos, notes on the Distant Feeling(s) project.

 

Filed under: networked performance, Daniel Pinheiro, Lisa Parra, reSense, Spektrum, telematic feeling

WHISPERONTHEINTERNET

Today I had a surprise from China in the post. LEAP #39.
LEAP is the bilingual art magazine of contemporary China. Published six times a year in Chinese and English, it presents a winning mix of contemporary art coverage and cultural commentary from the cutting edge of the Chinese art scene.

On  page 172 – 179 there is an article CAN YOU WHISPERONTHEINTERNET? by the artist and writer  Gretta Louw.

“In this article Gretta investigates the confluence of new digital technologies and visual art, and argues that the development of internet technologies and the accompanying tectonic shifts in our consumption of digital media have paved the way for a plethora of new networked performance subgenres.“,  reads  the editorial text.

“Experimental and developing online performative art genres, constantly forming and reforming, are some of the most underrepresented and under-acknowledged areas of artistic practice today, but also (and perhaps this is no accident) among the most exciting, relevant and meaningful.” writes Gretta.

Filed under: Articles / Texts, Net art, Performance, Gretta Louw, LEAP

Politics of Performance and Play

Thursday July 7 2016  14h15.
Lipsius 019,
Cleveringaplaats 1,
Leiden.

Besides, subjectivity is no longer a privileged site for emancipation
Networked performance
Annie Abrahams and Martina Ruhsam

In the frame of The Politics of Performance and Play. Feminist Matters conference, Institute of Philosophy, University of Leiden.
Panel: Performance, Agency and the Posthuman.
Conference programme

‘…if we really engage in storytelling as a sym-poietic practice, which is propositional and invitational, then we have a chance for re-worlding. Play always involves the invitation that asks ‘are we a “we”’? A “we” that does not pre-exist the propositional risk and testing.’
(Donna Haraway, 2015)

Martina Ruhsam and Annie Abrahams started the  performance series besides, – on Object Agency in June 2015.
This will be the 5th performance in this series.

“We perform experimenting thinking together using words and things and the affects transferred via our voices. We experiment performing thinking together, We think performing experiments together, We experiment thinking performance, We experiment performing thought together using words and things and the affects transferred via our voices…”

Filed under: Conference / lecture, Of interest, Performance, besides, Martina Ruhsam, networked performance

Communitas

In her article Fields of networked mind: Ritual consciousness and the factor of communitas in networked rites of compassion published in Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, Dec 2015., Dr Lila Moore made a link between the antropological theory of communitas and liminality  and  networked collaborative practices.

 

Although I can’t follow her when she refers to Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic resonance hypothesis, I do find the concept of communitas interesting to ponder upon.

Communitas refers to an unstructured state in which all members of a community are equal allowing them to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage. Communitas is characteristic of people experiencing liminality together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitas

The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

This resonates with something I wrote (cited by Moore) in 2014 : “I thought, and still think, it important to try to find words, ways of thinking about online performance, analysing it. What is so specific? What can we communicate and how? How do we perceive our bodies when performing? Why does it have such a special energy? Why is it so demanding? How come we feel so close to others, so included and often so extremely exhilarated? Is it because online performance makes the borders between the performers and the audience fluid? Is it because it lacks hierarchy? Because it goes against total control? from “Learn together what it means to be connected …, Annie Abrahams, CyPosium – the Book,  p158.

Being on a border, in an in between – What would be the ritualistic aspects of online collaborative performance?
Connecting to an interface – preparing sound and light conditions – all this in the right order – waiting for the others to come – how to say “hi”? – who is leading the event? – what is the score? …
Is there more to say about this? And what would it mean to not immediately reject links to shamanism, religion, and the sacred? …

Filed under: Articles / Texts, networked performance, communitas, cyposium-the book, Lila Moore

wishes / voeux – hypertext now

Yesterday Oliwia Blawat included my piece wishes / voeux from 1999 in Ipertestualmente.org her space for hypertext based art. (thanks Oliwia)
She writes on her research :  In my opinion hypertext is a complex structure built from nodes connected by hyperlinks that can be both textual and visual.It is a basic element of www and also of net art works (but not all of them). Hypertext consists in multiple number of links, it is only a framework that can exist both with data and without. The biggest problem of hypertext is that in the presence of complicated structure the content becomes less important and sometimes hypertext is difficult to read because the frame takes over data.

 

“The frame takes over the data?” and content becomes less important? Maybe that’s the way you can look at it now but at the time all was data, and all was content. It was often exactly the way content and form intertwined that made a lot of us interested in creating hypertext. (I remember for instance having the impression that I could finally experiment with representing “thought”.)
Also in new browsers some content became simply invisible  : onmouseover=”self.status=’to start over again without continually facing the humiliations of prejudice’; return true”,  ‘popups’ are often not allowed and hypertext on cellphones simply isn’t ergonomic. It’s not the same anymore. In 1999 we thought about human beings on the other side of the network, now we think in terms of information, likes and data flows.

In Dec. 2009 in Artistic Textual and Performative Paths in New Media Correlations: An Interview with Annie Abrahams by Evelin Stermitz, published in Hz #14, I talked about my first experiment in collectif writing like this :

 This first collective writing project was a collection of wishes, that I proposed to “stocker, déposer, entreposer, deposit, lodge, gardienage, mise en forme, entretien, surveillance, keeping, conservation, maintenance, caring, storage, stock, shaping”. Some of these wishes were chosen to be html-ized either by me or by other volunteering net artists like [anachroma], Takuji Kogo, Tiia Johannson, Christophe Desgouttes, Elise Lefevre, Ted Warnel, Mildred Pierce or Tamara Lai. As html-izing at the time was writing code, this htm-lizing was the second writing layer of the project. A third existed in the possibility to write a personal email, unseen by the others, to an unknown wishing person.

Detail of the complete collection of wishes / voeux, presented as a digital print 148cm x 148 cm in Training for a Better World, exposition CRAC LR, Sète. 28/10/2011 – 01/01/2012.

Filed under: Collective writing, Net art, Of interest, Evelin Stermitz, hypertext, Ipertestualment, Oliwia Blawat, wishes / voeux

Workshop Performance Art ‘being with’

Workshop Performance Art
‘being with … performance as research as experiment as tool’
by
Annie Abrahams

6th of July, 2016
14:30-17:00 h
Lipsius K031, Universiteit van Leiden, Cleveringaplaats 1.

Archives : CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS – An orchestra of things, notes by Cissie Fu, walkthrough, photos, scores, mp3, notes by me.

Can we construct, building only on what we are, a radically horizontal performance? Can we, at the same time, research the agency of objects in our relations? Let’s try. Who, what are we? We? Find an object, discover the object, make it exist, don’t talk, observe, write, change, rediscover, We, What is we?, don’t discuss, utter, do, observe, write, change.

In this workshop we will all be, and the conceptors, and the performers and the audience (involved observers). We will formulate and execute, while continuously changing roles, a changing script written by all.

We will work with my interpretation of the reformulation and transmission method used by Deufert&Plischke : our work processes are circular processes of continuously passing on and transmitting materials without discussion. We clearly position these practices as an aesthetic and political alternative to processes based on discussion and consensus.

photo ©Dina Lucia Weiss

Two unique workshops in cooperation with The Leiden University Institute for Philosophy
LAK cursussen, Universiteit van Leiden.
Costs : € 30 for UL-students and visitors of the conference, € 35 for UL-employees, € 40 for others.

In the context of
The Politics of Performance and Play. Feminist Matters
The Leiden University Institute for Philosophy.
Thursday 7th and Friday 8th July, 2016 Conference.

Filed under: Performance, Workshop, being with, Feminist matters, The Politics of Performance and Play

Water-wheel.net stopped streaming

Sadly Waterwheel, the wonderful platform for streaming dedicated to water, isn’t streaming any more. For their last event Water Works! I selected three entries to a call about :
– how WATER WORKS despite climate change, financial crises, war, and global environmental damage
– how art, science, design, and activism can reinstate the social, cultural and environmental value of water
– how we can give recognition to the indispensable and invaluable ways that water works

Here they are:

There’s an Invisible Place far away by Mikko Lipiäinen.
This video is a dramatization of the editing history of a Wikipedia article ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ which describes the phenomenon of discarted plastics accumulation in the North Pacific Ocean.
Anyone interested in the humanity and dynamics of collaborating, sharing and producing knowledge should watch this video in its full 24 min eloquence.

Wash Up  by James Cunningham. Direct link : https://youtu.be/ITdw60Ej_B8
One hand, one video, cut in two, two hands, two videos, one inversed, both mirrored => one kitchen sink, four hands dancing. Four hands dancing.

L’amour que rien by Antoine Moreau.
I don’t know if this is an ode to love, a warning or an incitation to open the eyes and to stop to turn turn turn.
https://vimeo.com/169332191

On Waterwheel you can still browse through almost five years of experimenting on a free platform for the awareness, celebration, care & accessibility of water everywhere. Thanks Suzon.  Sad.

Filed under: Curation, Antoine Moreau, James Cun­ning­ham, Mikko Lipiäinen, Water Works!, waterwheel