distributed intelligence on the fly?

It felt as closely observing a test tube in an internet ecology experiment.

I finally watched the video of our performance Online En-semble – Entanglement Training. It was so nice and touching to hear the voices, to listen to the the different soundqualities and latencies, to see the changing pixelations and environments. It was interesting to observe how the performers act, react, respond, with objects, sounds and words and find ways to co-create with each other and the machines.

Near the end we had 5 minutes of silently being together online. Helen didn’t get the sign for the end and continued alone.

It was also very engaging to see the audience chatting life during the performance. Randal Packer called this a non-stop flow of online viewer commentary: a simultaneous litany of questions, responses, digressions, and interjections in Power to the Viewer, the article he wrote after his Art of the Networked Practice symposium, where this performance was a part of.

Here are some citations of the chat log that particularly stroke me today:

Alan Sondheim: There’s an odd calmness here, as if they’re dream images or freud’s magic slate at work

Jessica Laraine Williams: I almost feel as if we are neural nets being trained with various iterants of standard objects, as a reference library. The repetitive verbal cues sound like training signals

Martina Ruhsam: as if they would imagine this performance that just happened in their mind

ximena: what are they listening to?
Maria Chatzichristodoulou: silence?
Jessica Laraine Williams: the space in between
Jessica Laraine Williams: white noise
Randall Packer: silence
Jan R 2: they are listening to us
…..
Ng Wen Lei: 4’33
Johannes Birringer: lovely, a telematic re-performance

Maria Chatzichristodoulou: it is interesting that Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz were also talking about experiments rather than performances as such, and considered training, rehearsal and performance to be the same

I would love to do a follow-up, to continue this entanglement training. I propose to keep this messy never ending unperfect strange conversation going …. it would be an example, a test tube for developping our empathy muscles over distance, to exercice in distributed intelligence.

Entanglement Training Online performance by Annie Abrahams with Antye Greie, Helen Varley Jamieson, Soyung Lee, Huong Ngô, Daniel Pinheiro, Igor Stromajer. Thursday 29 of March 2018 in the frame of Art of the Networked Practice symposium.
All project info (photos, protocol, collected phrases, reactions etc.)  bram.org/en-semble/

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Filed under: networked performance, Performance, Alan Sondheim, Antye Greie, Art of the Networked Practice, Daniel Pinheiro, entanglement, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, Jessica Laraine Williams, Johannes Birringer, Maria Chatzichristodoulou, Martina Ruhsam, Ng Wen Lei, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee, training

… building an empathy muscle …

Online-en-semble – Entanglement Training.

Huong Ngô: I really liked how the score was based on everyday movements, so close to those incidental images we make everyday when we are on Skype etc, but having us do it together really made it into something poetic and more like dance. I thought of Yvonne Rainer’s work. Also, I was thinking a lot about this promise of internationalist utopia that Maria talked about, and where we are in the world today – people becoming more extreme despite or because of technology. The distance that technology affords is something that we now must train our bodies against. I felt like the act of listening, patience, and trying to be present was a way to build that empathy muscle.

Rob Wittig : a wonderful performance today — tactile and musical and spooky and friendly and distant and close!

Images and photos on flickr
Performance protocol.pdf
Video :

From the chatlog (Complete Chat log 64 pages):
-Johannes Birringer: Karina, i learnt much from Corpos Informaticos, they used a whole different set of simple tools that i began to appreciate in many ways
-Daniel Perseguim: yes, Beatriz Medeiros from corpos informáticos are changing the ways of performing, learning expressing… the tools are the simple language, the failures, the “gambiarras”
-Alan Sondheim: there’s an odd calmness here, as if they’re dream images or freud’s magic slate at work
-Maria Chatzichristodoulou: yes Alan, i was thinking it’s a calming experience watching this
-Alan Sondheim: Calming in the midst of potential revolution, disturbance –
-Jessica Laraine Williams: I almost feel as if we are neural nets being trained with various iterants of standard objects, as a reference library. The repetitive verbal cues sound like training signals
-Alan Sondheim: there’s an economics at work
-Marc Garrett: It’s DIWO in realtime!
-Maria Chatzichristodoulou: it is interesting that Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz were also talking about experiments rather than performances as such, and considered training, rehearsal and performance to be the same

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, Antye Greie, Daniel Pinheiro, entanglement, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, networked performance, protocol, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee, symposium

Training Entanglement with whom?

With amazing artists and machines, cables and you.

With Igor Stromajer, the pseudo-artist, who inspired me when in 2001 he started his famous Ballettikka Internettikka online performance series. We met in 2006, when he came to Montpellier to perform an Oppera Internettikka with me and a mezzo-soprano in the Opéra National de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon. Over time we continued to collaborate actively in projects as The Big Kiss, Angry Women, HuisClos/No Exit and Beyond (spectacle) among others.

With Antye Greie (also known as AGF), a renowned composer, music producer, sound artist & curator, poet, feminist and activist, that I respect deeply. I performed 13 short performative conversational meetings online with her. We talked about html, wind, pixels, law, mothers, key frame, snow, philosophies, fruits, thinking and islands, humans and words, nuts, recording quality, law, shopping, wind, patriotism, love, ocean space, sound rate, communism, dancing, languages and salad, family and future. She also was a very active participant in the Angry Women project. We never met for real.

With Soyung Lee from South Korea who I never met for real neither, and with whom I never performed before. In 2016 I discovered her enchanting work Displaced when researching language practices and art. I tried to write about this hybrid performance and asked her some questions that are published here. Now she participates. Yes!

With Huong Ngô, an American artist, who I first met when I was in New York in 2010 for a Rhizome event and The Big Kiss performance with Mark River in OTO. Accidentally we met again some years later in Paris at an opening. We share an interest in the entanglement of language, identity and power relations and I admire the way she connects personal and political histories using a conceptual, interdisciplinary, and often collaborative approach. See for instance The Voice is an Archive or The Silent Period. Now we collaborate for the first time. Yes!

With Daniel Pinheiro, a Portugese video artist interested in telematics performance, who I met last summer in Porto where he participated in my ELO keynote performance Ours Lingages as singer, dancer and computer operator.  We had been collaborating before in the Distant Feeling(s), a tele-shared experience project (with also Lisa Parra), after I once participated in their LAND project. I especially appreciate the always very interesting observations and analyses he writes down. We will continue collaborating for sure.

With Helen Varley Jamieson, who coined the word cyberformance. I share a project called unaussprechbarlich and a book called Cyposium – the book with her. We had numerous online encounters in different online venues as for instance the Upstage platform, that she co-initiated. Helen is a feminist and a very fierce defender of the use of open-source software.

Many thanks to Randall Packer the symposium chair who made this possible!

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training
Live Online Performance Thursday, 29 March 2018, 7am-10am CDT / 8am-11am EDT / 2pm-5pm CEDT / 8pm-11pm SGT
In the frame of Art of the Networked Practice | Online Symposium – Social Broadcasting: an Unfinished Communications Revolution, School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang University, Singapore (29 – 31 March 2018, a collaboration between the School of Art, Design & Media, Singapore; LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore; and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Performance, USA).

Filed under: Conference / lecture, Event, Performance, Antye Greie, Daniel Pinheiro, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training

Online En-semble – Entanglement Training.
Online performance with Annie Abrahams (NL/FR), Antye Greie (DE/FI), Helen Varley Jamieson (NZ/DE), Soyung Lee (KR), Huong Ngô (HK/USA), Daniel Pinheiro (VE/PT) and Igor Stromajer (SLO/DE)
In the frame of Art of the Networked Practice symposium, School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Chair by Randall Packer.

In this new work we investigate how to be together in a connected world, where machines and humans have to communicate accepting partial overviews, glitches, time-lags, disrupting audience participation and ensuing disorientations. Abrahams considers the intra-active webcam performance situation a good apparatus to train and demonstrate entanglement. She wrote a script for seven performers with different cultural backgrounds. They will defy their own and the others’ ideas on performance and online politics in a conversational performance. In order to avoid chit-chat and to get rid of the distracting images of the faces she proposes to converse using objects, prepared phrases and voices. During the performance they create together a changing composition with the objects and improvise a sound environment with their voices and phrases. Because they share the responsibility for the performances’ acoustic and visual appearance it will be interesting to see how they negotiate their individuality and personal thoughts in this environment where they all have equal power. Contradictions, maybe even oppositions, as well as poetry can emerge in this collectively created complexity, where machines facilitate but also prevent. The performers research the limits and possibilities of their own agency in an attempt to be “with” while being separated.

Program of the day:
8 pm SGT Introduction by Randall Packer.
8.15 pm SGT Maria Chatzichristodoulou keynote Live Art and Telematics: The Promise of Internationalism
9.30 pm SGT Online En-semble – Entanglement Training Live networked performance
10 pm SGT Post performance roundtable
This is Singapore time. Find your own time here.

How to connect for the performance (you will need 5 min to prepare).

Disentangling the Entanglements article on our preparations by Randall Packer

Web page with information about preparations, protocols, text, video, images and later the archives.

Latency Training.

Filed under: Performance, Antye Greie, Daniel Pinheiro, entanglement, Helen Varley Jamieson, Huong Ngo, Igor Stromajer, networked performance, Randall Packer, Soyung Lee, symposium

VR – performance – residency.

Wh(o/at) arranges When. / Qu(o)i agence Quand.

I had the lucky occasion to discover VR during a residency December 4-9 2017 and January 30 – February 10 2018 in the Labo NRV, invited by Les Subsistances, Lyon.

More images on flickr.
Information en français.

I had never used a VR headset and so in the first week Olivier Bienz, a student, showed and brought me into different universes as The Lab (Steam), Google Earth, VRchat, Tilt Brush as well as some he or his fellow students made himself. He also showed me Unity 3D, a game development platform, used to create VR worlds and thus we created my first VR landscape together. At the same time Célia Bonnet-Ligeon, the lab’s coordinator organised meetings for me with local organisations like UrbanLab (ERASME), Eydolon and Nucléus, who all generously showed me their expertise.
I also met the researchers of the laboNRV and students of ENSBA Lyon. We talked, tested the VR headset while carrying the wearer, putting her upside down. It was and hilarious, and energizing and inspiring for all of us and so I decided to continue to work with them.
I was impressed by how simple it was to create an illusion of a landscape in the headset by using Unity’s basic terrain and drawing tools and how that influenced my imagination. I remembered David Markson’s book Wittgenstein’s Mistress and started to write some text that I could use in between the short modules (4 – 5) of what should become a collective performance, developed in the last week of the residency.

Video trailer by Guillaume Seyller. 6.58 min.

Wh(o/at) arranges When. / Qu(o)i agence Quand. A performance by Annie Abrahams with Valentin Godard, Guillaume Seyller, Johanne Mortgat, Keywa Henri, Arthur Jamon, Laetitia Dangelade and Elisa Baron.

– a stage – a computer – a VR headset – unity + steam – a video projector + large screen – two joysticks – two sensors – a standing microphone – 50 chairs – two tables – a blindfold – sound amplification – diffuse light + a spot –

We had no repetition, only tests and trainings. I have spend two days with the students to familiarize them with the tool, and to have them explore its limits and possibilities. To discover what kind of relationship with the body and the imagination, it can produce.
We worked with and in VR, not for VR.
We explored VR space from the inside and from the outside, and discovered an in-between.

Protocol .pdf + notes and text. (in French)
How it was announced.  (in French)

Vide – ligne – paysage – couleur – éclair. Sound by Jan de Weille. (command)

This is what I formulated as a starting point for this artistic research in Oct. 2017 :
Where are we in VR space? In what is called Third Space? or in a liminal space? and is it important to know where we are?
Is the “I” still important in there, and how do we meet an other? What other ? How far are we giving up control? How far do we dissolve, get lost? Who arranges what? And what relationship to our body can we have, do we have?
Could a VR experience become like an intractive entanglement training?

“It is.”, I can answer now, as long as you search for what it is build of, how it is experienced from the inside as well as from the outside, together and with others.

Filed under: Event, Performance, Virtual Reality, agency, body, intraction, laboNRV, Les Subsistances, unity, VR

Entanglements and glitches.

Disentangling the Entanglements is an article by Randall Packer, Associate Professor of Networked Art at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), School of Art, Design and Media in Singapore, about my upcoming performance with  Antye Greie, Helen Varley Jamieson, Soyung Lee, Hương Ngô, Daniel Pinheiro and Igor Stromajer on the first day of the symposium The Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium 29-31 March 2018, that he organises.

Technical tests  Jan. 2018

negotiate ideas together in order to achieve a result that’s not just one person’s problem, one person’s effort, but it’s the effort of a group of people solving a problem collectively.

Please visit the Symposium Website for more information and to register online.

On the 29th of March, Randall Packer will open the symposium and introduce the theme of the day: Being & Connectedness in Telematic Spaces. Then there is a keynote by Maria Chatzichristodoulou, who is associate professor in Performance and New Media at the London South Bank University. We follow with our performance called Online En-semble – Entanglement Training. And at the end there will be a discussion between all the participants and the online and on-site public.

On March 30, with the theme Networking the Real and the Fictional, Steve Dixon, President of LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore will do an introduction and Blast Theory Co-founder Matt Adams will do a keynote. At the end there will again be a roundtable.

On Saturday March 31, centered around igaies (intimate glitches across internet errors), Jon Cates, Associate Professor Film, Video, and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago will present an introduction, and will direct and perform a live networked performance with Roberto Sifuentes (US), Arcángel Constantini (MX), Shawné Michaelain Holloway (US), 愛真 Janet Lin (US) & Paula Pinho Martins Nacif (UK) (XXXtraPrincess).

Filed under: Articles / Texts, Conference / lecture, Net art, Of interest, Performance, entanglement, networked performance, Randall Packer

quand l’écran était encore un seul à seul

C’est drôle de découvrir aujourd’hui l’article L’intime à l’épreuve du réseau, écrit par Annie Gentes* en 2007. Elle y dissèque entre autres les facettes in-ex-times dans le travail de Nicolas Frespech et moi (p 92-95).
C’est drôle de s’imaginer que, peut être, elle écrivait ce texte exactement au moment où Nicolas et moi, nous faisions notre première performance webcam l’un la poupée de l’autre ensemble au Centre Pompidou.
C’est moins drôle de se dire que, aujourd’hui, cet in-ex-time s’est dissout dans une constellation de machines et d’algorithmes invisibles qui voient tout.

Les deux artistes révèlent que l’intimité se définit comme dynamique entre une mise en public et une mise à l’écart.

L’intime à l’épreuve du réseau, Annie Gentes.
Communication et langages, n°152, 2007. Usages médiatiques du portrait. P. 89-105.
Numéro thématique : Usages médiatiques du portrait.
Sous direction de Adeline Wrona.
L’un la Poupée de l’autre

*Annie Gentes est directeur Co-design and Media Studies à Telecom ParisTech.

Filed under: Articles / Texts, Net art, Performance, Annie Gentes, art en réseaux, intime extime, Nicolas Frespech

Daniel Fohr se rappelle – unmortparpage

Annie Abrahams, tueuse en série. Daniel Fohr se rappelle de un mort par page; la page web qu’il m’avait commandé en 2007 pour son premier roman avec le même titre.
Un jeu interactif avec 162 boutons (162 étant le nombre des pages du livre de Daniel) sur lesquels on pouvait lire « tuer » convertissait le joueur en serial-killer digital.
Merci pour les jolies captures d’écran souvenir Daniel. L’expérience est encore possible ici.

Filed under: Articles / Texts, Net art, Of interest, Daniel Fohr, unmortparpage

Qu(o)i agence Quand.

8/2 2018 19h30 Sortie de Chantier Qu(o)i <=> agence <=> Quand.
Avec Valentin Godard, Olivier Bienz, Alain Barthelemy, Guillaume Seyller, Alix Desaubliaux, Nicolas Frespech, Pierre Sibileau, Johanne Mortgat, Keywa Henri, Arthur Jamon, Laetitia Dangelade, Elisa Baron et Jan de Weille.
Plateau 2, 8 bis, quai St Vincent 69001 Lyon.
Entrée libre sur réservation.

4-9/12 2017, 30/1 – 10/2 2018 Résidence Labo NRV, ENSBA Lyon et Les Subsistances, Lyon.

Point de départ : Où sommes-nous dans un espace VR ? Dans ce qu’on appelle Le Third Space ?, ou dans l’espace liminal ?, et est-ce important de savoir où on se trouve ?
Est-ce que le « je » y a encore une importance?, et comment on y rencontre l’autre ? Quel autre ? Jusqu’à quel point on abandonne son contrôle ? Jusqu’à quel point on se dissout, se perd ? Qui agence quoi ?
Et quelle relation à notre corps nous pourrions y avoir, y avons-nous ?

Pourrait une expérience VR devenir comme un entraînement à l’intrication (entanglement) intractive ?

“Mon premier terrain dans le logiciel unity – Je cherche à vivre le vide. C’était avant la glace et les montagnes. Je pense d’ailleurs beaucoup à La maitresse de Wittgensteins de David Markson”. Note d’Annie 5/12/2017. Au début elle écrivait son nom dans la rue.

Montage d’entretiens autour du VR. Voix de Nicolas Frespech, Valentin Godard, Alix Desaubliaux, Olivier Bienz, Pierre Sibileau.

 

Filed under: Event, Performance, ENSBA, laboNRV, Les Subsistances, VR

Conférence sur canapé, Design, dasein, lasagnes… Oudeis

En juillet dernier : deux jours d’expérimentation, de performance avec OUDEIS. Un régal.
Venez le mercredi 22 et jeudi 23 novembre, 18h, à Ganges pour les Apéros Sonores au Café du Siècle. Ce sera une suite sonore des Conférences sur canapé dans le cadre du festival En chantier …!

Design, dasein, lasagnes.. Version longue. 10 min. Version courte 2 min. ici

Avec Dorian Reunkrilerk, Annie Abrahams, Manuel Fadat, Sandra et Gaspard Bébié-Valérian.
Juillet 2017

La Conférence sur canapé est un dispositif performatif en perpétuelle évolution, réunissant en un temps et un espace donné un certain nombre d’individus, de technologies, d’énergies, de matériaux, pour une expérience collective, avec ou sans spectateurs, connecté ou non, sur le web, autour d’une figure, d’une pensée, d’un discours, de propos, que des performers accompagnent, modèrent, parasitent, lissent, perturbent, interpellent. Situation inédite, indéterministe, la Conférence sur canapé explore, délivre plus qu’elle livre, elle n’est jamais en échec.

Interroger le confort – qu’en est-il aujourd’hui de la question du confort, que traduit-il de notre conduite au monde ? partir dans l’espace – en espace. Quel est notre rapport aux objets en apesanteur ?
Nous habitons des volumes, plus des surfaces ou des sols. L’espace met à défaut le corps et ses habitudes. (passage octave de gaulle).
La négociation du corps avec son environnement n’existe plus, il n’est plus visqueux.
Sur terre, considérons le corps comme une matière visqueuse qui s’échoit sur des objets. Je m’asseois et je négocie. Le choc des particules.
Quand le beurre est coupé, le couteau est affecté.
Le confort est le contraire : la présence de l’environnement matériel disparaît. Le confort c’est l’espace. C’est dans la chute libre que je négocie le moins avec les particules – je fais le moins d’effort. Confort, du latin confortare, dérivé de com-fortis, c a d soulager d’une peine, d’un effort. Didier Faustino – Opus incertum
Dois-t-on réellement chercher le moindre des effort ? Bruno Munari – recherche de confort dans un fauteuil inconfortable. Munari va à l’encontre du processus de mort. Xavier Bichat, 1800 : la vie réunit l’ensemble des fonctions qui résistent à la mort. En ce sens, le confort, participe à l’accélaration du processus de mort.
Reversible Destiny – Arakawa Shusaku et Madeline Gins – ne pas mourir.
Faire l’effort de faire autrement – avoir des possibilités et des paramètres. Ne pas se sentir dans une injontion d’un usage équivoque. Ethique joyeuse du corps visqueux.
Le confort serait-il justement le paramétrage ? Dorian Reunkrilerk

Filed under: Event, Performance, conférence sur canapé, Dorian Reunkrilerk, Gaspard Bébié-Valérian, Manuel Fadat, OUDEIS, Sandra Bébié Valérian