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/

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

Ours Lingages – Documentation

Ours Lingages
Performance by
Annie Abrahams concept, script, reading, singing

with
Daniel Pinheiro computing, dancing, singing, video editing
Isabel Costa dancing, reading
Igor Stromajer {0§n–3¦é×F= Miá†} soundpoem in Portuguese
Outranspo – Lily Robert-Foley, Camille Bloomfield and Jonathan Baillehache reawriting
Jan de Weille reawriting
Rui Torres translation
Helen Varley Jamieson tchat queen
Anna Tolkacheva live video capturing
Public volunteers holding Isabel Costa upside down
All breathing

21/07 2017 10.15 PM, Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória, Porto,
Electronic Literature Organisation conference ELO 2017.

Announcement

Script .pdf

We nooses tous des bastardi elettronici che usano lingue globali cinematographic archive of the readingclub session.

Filed under: Collective writing, Conference / lecture, e-literature, Performance, Anna Tolkacheva, Annie Abrahams, Camille Bloomfield, Daniel Pinheiro, ELO 2017, Helen Varley Jamieson, Igor Stromajer, Isabel Costa, Jan de Weille, Jonathan Baillehache, Lily Robert-Foley, readingclub.fr, Rui Torres

Ours Lingages

21/07 2017 10.15 PM Performance Ours Lingages
Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória, Porto.
during the Electronic Literature Organisation conference ELO 2017
Annie Abrahams featured artist
invited by Rui Torres and Sandy Baldwin

Performance in collaboration with Daniel Pinheiro, Isabel Costa, Igor Stromajer, Outranspo (Lily Robert-Foley, Camille Bloomfield, Jonathan Baillehache), Jan de Weille, Rui Torres, Helen Varley Jamieson,  Anna Tolkacheva and the readingclub.

Ours Lingages = a script – online poetry, language learning tools and collective writing + code + voice + dance + text + singing and a blindfold – unrehearsed.

You are welcome online for the associated session of the readingclub, where Helen is expecting you. Duration 30 min. For the complete performance you will have to be in Porto.

Ours Lingages. The internet is my language mother. I speak with a voice that’s not my own, I speak in other voices, not my voice. We are all e-strangers, all nomads that use globish bastard languages. We are the alienated translated (wo)men in-between code and emotion, in-between our wish to be visible and our longing for intimacy. L’entre-deux = void. Can’t we be “with” instead?
Translation is a joy as long as you can accept the imperfections of the result, are willing to learn, to spend time, to pay attention, to take risks and to accept your own incompleteness and glitches. Translation is always failing, faulty, it’s a source for confusion … and discovery. It opens a third language; another in-between, and then a fourth and … Better take nothing for granted and play with it. Be the one not looking at what something is, but at what something can do.
You have to accept (a FEW times). A few times. New language. Let’s try to be “with”.

Documentation – video etc.

Filed under: e-literature, Of interest, Performance, Daniel Pinheiro, Electronic Literature Organisation, ELO 2017, Igor Stromajer, Isabel Costa, multilinguism, outranspo, ReadingClub

ϟℙ∀ℳℳ▁ℙϴШ€ℜ – Beyond (spectacle) – test – glitched

ϟℙ∀ℳℳ▁ℙϴШ€ℜ

SPAMM_POWER

Curators : Ellectra Radikal & Systaime

ϟℙ∀ℳℳ is a virtual online museum dedicated to digital arts and emerging cultures.

BEYOND (SPECTACLE) – TEST GLITCHED Original performance test with Igor Stromajer.
Performance Writing Weekend – ELMCIP Seminar 2012 – Arnolfini Bristol.

Filed under: Exhibition, Net art, Ellectra Radikal, Igor Stromajer, SPAMM, spamm_power, Systaime

ReadingClub – unaussprechbarlich

Ein online kollektives Schreibexperiment über
Die Schwierigkeiten und Freuden von Deutschlernen
mit
Igor Stromajer, Sandra Sarala, Helen Varley Jamieson und Annie Abrahams.

Das Publikum kann dieses poetische Battle live anschauen und kommentieren.
Klicken Sie bitte am 21. November ein bisschen vor 21 Uhr auf das Websitelink http://readingclub.fr.

Im Rahmen von Unaussprechbarlich, einem Forschungsprojekt, einer Website und einer Performanceserie von Annie Abrahams und Helen Varley Jamieson, wo die Künstlerinnen die eigene Dynamik von Sprachen erforschen und der Frage nachgehen, wie stark das, was wir unsere Kultur nennen, durch die Sprache geprägt ist.

Unaussprechbarlich wird ermöglicht durch eine Residenz in der Villa Walberta und die Unterstützung des Kulturreferats der LH München. Externer Berater : Horst Konietzny.

“You can join us in the ethereal weirdness of our non-native finger-activated tongues” Sandra Sarala

Filed under: Collective writing, networked performance, Helen Varley Jamieson, Igor Stromajer, Reading Club, ReadingClub, Sandra Sarala, unaussprechbarlich, Villa Waldeberta

Pixxelpoint 2014 – I am an Artwork

NON-ART / NEUMETNOST
Pixxelpoint 2014 – Media Art Festival
Nova Gorica SI / Gorizia IT
5 – 12 December 2014
Curator : Igor Štromajer
Presented by Annie Abrahams :
– Two poster with a collection of phrases from “Je suis une oeuvre d’art : oui, non, peut être” published in 2006 during a performance/lecture/battle of the same phrases in the exhibition “Chauffe Marcel!” organized by FRAC Languedoc Roussillon in La Panacée, Montpellier.
– Website archive of “Am I an artwork? Yes, no, maybe.” as it exists since 2007 on the website of the FRACLR. (www.fraclr.org/archives/abrahams/iamanartwork.htm)

“Je suis une oeuvre d’art : oui, non, peut être – Am I an artwork? Yes, no, maybe.” commissioned by the FRACLR in 2002 and active on their website till 2007. The piece questioned the relation between netart and the art world on the website of an official art institution.

Filed under: Exhibition, I am an artwork, Igor Stromajer, Je suis une oeuvre d'art, non-art, Pixxelpoint 2014

A three-way conversation about performance art online

Igor Štromajer & Annie Abrahams by Gretta Louw in BOMB Magazine April 21st 2014.

BOMB Magazine has been publishing conversations between artists of all disciplines since 1981. BOMB’s founders—New York City based artists and writers—created BOMB because they saw a disparity between the way artists talked about their work among themselves and the way critics described it.

“I first met Igor Štromajer online—we are net-based artists, after all. That was back in 2011 when I spent 10 days locked in a Berlin gallery, available 24 hours a day for contact via the Internet to test the effects of extreme online connectedness as part of a performance called Controlling_Connectivity. Igor became very involved in the performance, posing some of the most insightful questions from participants in the piece, and eventually dubbing me the “Joan of Arc of the Internet.” Through Igor, I discovered Annie Abrahams’s wonderful, groundbreaking networked performances such as The Big Kiss, where she spent several hours “kissing” a collaborator via the web using a split-screen and close-up webcam streams of each of the performers’ mouths. Though very different in style, these two artists share a gift for showing us the messy, human side of the Internet and technology; their work is authentic, intimate, exploratory, and inspiring.” Introduction by Gretta.

Filed under: Interview, Bomb, BOMB Magazine, Gretta Louw, Igor Stromajer