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

Participar en tiempo discontinuo

besides,

Participar en tiempo discontinuo
Zara Rodríguez Prieto

Telón de fondo. Revista de teoría y crítica teatral, núm. 25, 2017, pp. 160-178.
ISSN 1669-6301
telóndefondo /25 (2017)

In the Virtual Archive for Performing Arts (AVAE), written in Spanish, Zara Rodríguez Prieto analyses besides, (page 165 – 170), the online performance project I did with Martina Ruhsam (2014 – ….), Blast Theory‘s Karen, and Miranda July‘s Somebody as examples of the different ways conversation and discourse participate in online performative practices.

Direct link to download the complete article. (18 pages)

Resumen
Este texto analiza el concepto de participación en prácticas artísticas performativas realizadas a través de internet. Mediante el análisis de tres obras el estudio aborda la idea de participación desde la conversación como dispositivo y desde la construcción del discurso a partir de la interacción en red. En ese proceso se atiende también a la fragmentación temporal de la conversación, impuesta por las características propias de la interacción virtual y a sus implicaciones en la creación de discurso en un espacio compartido.
Abstract
The text examines the concept of participation in performative artistic practices which have taken place through the Internet. Analyzing three pieces, this study addresses the idea of participation focusing on conversation as a device and on the forms of discourse developed since the beginning of networked interaction. The article also explores the temporal fragmentation of conversation imposed by the characteristics of virtual interaction and its implications for the creation of discourse in a shared space.

What is visible and what is not? What escapes visibility? What (is) resisted the exhibition? What belongs to each temporal layer of reality / fiction? From these main issues (online meeting, how to be together in the distance, not becoming dominant, the conversation and the agency of objects) arise another series of secondary issues that affect, in one way or another, any online relationship such as the creation of a shared intimate space, the contingency, the corporal relationship, the silences and the fragmented communication.
Google translation of a description of besides, on the Archivo Virtual de Artes Escénicas (AVAE) website.

besides, started as a Turbulence commission made possible with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Filed under: Articles / Texts, networked performance, Performance, AVAE, besides, Blast Theory, Martina Ruhsam, Miranda July, Zara Rodríguez Prieto

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

besides, compressed … video, script

(©Dina Lucia Weiss)

“We falsely equate the audience with the public instead of always viewing it as separate from the public, as something by means of which we temporarily leave the public outside and rehearse new adventures in how to be together through being separated.”

The first phrase of the performance besides, compressed by communication (On Object Agency), that Martina Ruhsam and I did last Saturday online and Im Flieger* in Vienna, was a citation from Bojana Kunst’s book Artist at Work. The last phrase was a variation on Hito Steyerl’s How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File.

Here is the video of the screen recording (35 min) :

The complete text / script where we based the performance on and the logfile of the online chat are available from bram.org/besides

“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…” Extract from “besides, what are we doing ?” Notes on the performance series, 03 2016.

* In the frame of Stoffwechsel – Ökologien der Zusammenarbeit.

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, Video, besides, compresses by communication, Martina Ruhsam, on object agency

besides, compressed by communication

besides, compressed by communication
Performance with Martina Ruhsam
March 19th 20h
Duration 30 – 40 minutes with discussion afterwards

Im_Flieger,
Im_flieger@Schokoladenfabrik, Gaudenzdorfergürtel 43–45/4. Stock/4C, 1120 Wien (U4 Margaretengürtel) >> map
Pay as you wish

To assist online go to water-wheel.net a little bit before 20h and click ENTER (please be patient, you might have to wait a few minutes before it will be working)

In the frame of Metabolism – Ecologies of collaboration (project & platform).
Stoffwechsel – Ökologien der Zusammenarbeit ist ein transmediales Forschungsprojekt mit unterschiedlich involvierten Künstler_innen und Theoretiker_innen und experimentiert mit strukturellen und künstlerischen Verschränkungen.

Im_Flieger is an Independent Artists’ Association – Platform and Experimental Ground for Dance, Performance and related Art Forms.

A real-time composition in which daily objects interrelate in an interface that usually frames the heads of humans. Annie Abrahams (In Montpellier) and Martina Ruhsam (in Wien) communicate by juxtaposing and resituating objects and by reading a text that is recomposed during the course of the performance. Unexpected links between thing and thing, object and text, image and sound appear. Sometimes the inorganic performers hijack the discussion. Scissors meet a knife which coincides with the word capitalism before being replaced by a little white box that is temporarily allied with anonymity. While matches and a paperbag are visible, a discussion about being post-image takes place, followed by the inorganic pulsations of a plastic nose and a plastic bag. The conversation meanders through unpredictable territories and is disseminated among various human and nonhuman agents.

We perform experimenting thinking together using words and things and the affects transferred via our voices. We experiment performing thinking together using words and things and the affects transferred via our voices. We think performing experiments together, We experiment thinking performance together, We experiment performing thought … citation from besides, what are we doing ? Notes on the performance series, 03 2016, Annie Abrahams

Filed under: Performance, besides, Im_Flieger, Martina Ruhsam, networked performance

besides, smaller than a single pixel – pixxelpoint performance

November 28th 2015 18h30
besides, smaller than a single pixel,
networked performance
Martina Ruhsam and Annie Abrahams
pixxelpoint 2015 festival, Nova Gorica (Slo), Gorizia (I)
Curator: Igor Stromajer

You can assist in Nova Gorica or online in Waterwheel
(please come a bit early because the streaming interface needs time to load – upto 3min.)

Martina will be streaming live from the Nova Gorica City Gallery in Slovenia and Annie from Villa Waldberta in Feldafing, Germany.

besides, smaller than a single pixel is a real-time composition in which daily objects interrelate in an interface that usually frames the heads of humans. Annie Abrahams and Martina Ruhsam communicate by juxtaposing and restituating objects and by reading a text that is recomposed during the course of the performance. Unexpected links between thing and thing, object and text, image and sound appear. Sometimes the inorganic performers hijack the discussion. Scissors meet a knife which coincides with the word capitalism before being replaced by a little white box that is temporarily allied with anonymity. While matches and a paperbag are juxtaposed, a discussion about being post-image takes place that is followed by inorganic pulsations. The conversation meanders through unpredictable territories and is disseminated among various human and nonhuman agents.
– text / script of the performance already available before .pdf
– log of tchat during the performance.
– screencaptured video archive

Before the performance at 5PM Martina gave a lecture The It As Actant in the Nova Gorica City Gallery. Here is the .pdf of this lecture.

Filed under: networked performance, Performance, besides, Martina Ruhsam, on object agency, pixxelpoint 2015, waterwheel

besides, – some reflections on the first three performances

Now online : Reflections on the three first performances besides,

Annie .pdf
Martina .pdf

More information : videos, scripts, chatlogs, notes on the website of Turbulence who commissioned these performances (with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts).

“Why would two naked women (with white skin, Western) visible online be subversive/critical? There is the terrifying practice of using the web for the purpose of exposing oneself relentlessly, even ones naked body. And there is a whole industry exploiting these acts. There is the problem that one cannot get these images down from the net – once they circulate in its tentacles.
Usually we look into the face of someone but we don´t see the body of the person. It is covered with clothes. Especially in online-communication the interface usually frames the head, the face. In Besides, dear body, there are two bare bodies without a face. It could also be two different bodies. It is not so much about the individuality of these two bodies or the (hi)stories that have sedimented in them. It is about reaching out to one another, to link to one another. It is about disrespecting limitations and boundaries (of the image, the body, the space etc.)
I consider Besides, dear body, as an experiment and the result as a poetic moving image of holding on to each other in all our vulnerability (I think we succeeded in showing nudity as a fragile costume) – no matter what the physical distance is. Indeed, via virtual/online-communication we are able to create linkages, to induce closeness, the feeling of being interwoven with other people´s threads, thoughts…During the online-communication one is „sharing distance“ with someone or some persons and it can be a very intimate experience.
At the same time online-communication emphasizes solitude. At the latest when one closes the interface, or one shuts down the computer one is alone. There is no way of going out to the foyer or to the bar and seeing the persons that were part of the event, watching the performance. There is not even certainty about the fact that there was anyone watching.”
Extract from Martina’s reflections.

“I know I would never have done a performance on aging (besides, Dear Body,), showing myself naked if I hadn’t been confronted to my own possible ending. It felt soothing to connect my nude body to the image of Martina’s much younger body. It felt as if we created a continuum in difference and made a statement that said „don’t worry, this is life“. I wanted it to be a gift.
Afterwards there was a big shock when I looked at the recording of the performance, when I looked at my naked body. I see this body every day in a mirror, but the video image is not the same as a mirror image – there was no head, no action going on, just the body to look at. It took time to overcome my personal aversion to my own aging body, to accept the breathing image, to accept its reality, to let the video live as an independant object showing aging, a tender connexion, and a crack.”
Extract from Annie’s reflections.

Filed under: Articles / Texts, networked performance, besides, Martina Ruhsam, Turbulence

empathy and intimacy in networked performances

propinquity, cross-reality, tele-presence, synaesthesia, ideasthesia

After reading Frans de Waal’s book on The Bonobo and the Athesist, I wondered if it would help me to better understand what is happening in networked webcam performance thinking about it in terms of empathy. So I wrote a status :

Would “empathy” be a word to describe what is needed (put at stake) in networked webcam performances?
The discussion this triggered made me realise a lot had happened since we organised the CyPosium in 2012. There seems to be a very lively bunch of people, with new approaches and ways of thinking, working in this field.

Participants :
Suzon Fuks – Waterwheel platform
Daniel Pinhero and Lisa Parra of LAND project
Helen Varley Jamieson – Upstage platform
Ienke Kastelein artist – performer
Martina Ruhsam performer – choreographer
Michael Baird musician
Roger Mills director of ethernet orchestra
Randall Packer of postREALITY.tv
Sara Malinarich from the Intact project
Jason Crouch of Contact Manchester
Jesse Ricke of CultureHub New York.

I screencaptured the whole thread and post it here as 12 .jpg’s. (interesting links to videos, discussions, academic approaches and practice)

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After the discussion we started a closed facebook group. If you are interested, please ask to join us, you are very welcome.

The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often, forming a bond between subject and friend. Feeling close in networked performance might depend on “the percieved feedback”.

The public can’t be an object/subject for empathy, there are too many different people inside it – empathic skills projected on a public easily become manipulative, become something else.

Physical distance between the persons performing and also between them and the persons watching does allow for intimacy in a very special way. Maybe the intimacy is even connected to a shared sense of awkwardness that the situation implies.

Empathy is a quality, a capacity of one person (as is intelligence, sensibility), not something between persons / it is the capacity “a receptiveness to the rhythms, energy, utterances of the other person” – it is a prerequisite for intimacy.

Rather than empathy it’s about a process of increasing synaesthesia.

What telepresents CAN NOT be present, but we cling stubbornly to this utopia. (Jorge Ruiz Abanades)

Maybe one day there will be another CyPosium …

Filed under: performance, cyposium, Daniel Pinheiro, empathy, Helen Varley Jamieson, Ienke Kastelein, Intimacy, Jason Crouch, Jesse Ricke, Jorge Ruiz Abanade, Lisa Parra, Martina Ruhsam, networked performance, propinquity, Randall Packer, Roger Mills, Sara Malinarich, Suzon Fuks, tele-presence

besides, the city is not a tree – #6pmeu

besides, the city is not a tree

July 22, 6pm (CET). A  performance by Annie Abrahams and Martina Ruhsam.
In collaboration with OUDEIS, laboratoire pour les arts numériques, électroniques et médiatiques in Le Vigan, France. Live documentation and reactions via https://twitter.com/oudeis_levigan.
Streaming Ivan Chabanaud / mosaika.tv. Duration around 20 min.

A follow-up of Martina and Annie’s Turbulence commission besides, the person I am becoming.

On Object Agency. Collected words and objects – overheard phrases, poetry, academic citations, a piece of concrete, foam, money, a lamp. What if objects ? …

For besides, the person I am becoming, for one month we collected text – overheard phrases, poetry, magazine, academic citations and objects. While preparing we decided the objects should not be personal, not be too beautiful, as ordinary, casual, daily as possible. We wanted the objects to act as much as the words we selected from our collection. This resulted in what Igor Stromajer called a “theory-meditation“. https://vimeo.com/131117816 For besides, the city is not a tree we want to try out another more narrative version of the text collection, to speed up the rhythm and to see what meaning might arise from such a text object layering.

Event in the frame of 6PM Your Local Time Europe: a distributed contemporary art exhibition, taking place all over Europe in art institutions, galleries and artist studios at the same time, and documented online under the same hashtag.

Watch the performance here : http://bram.org/besides. While watching, please post images, text and videos on your Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #6pmeu. The images feed will be transmitted in real time to www.6pmyourlocaltime.com.

6PM Your Local Time is curated by Fabio Paris for Link Art Center. More information http://www.linkartcenter.eu/archives/3580.

Filed under: Event, performance, #6pmeu, besides, Martina Ruhsam, networked performance, object agency, OUDEIS, some thing

besides, – 3 online performances

besides, Three online performances. A Turbulence commission with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Annie Abrahams and Martina Ruhsam.

June 11 2015 : besides, the person I am becoming. Duration 20 minutes. The audience can interact via a chatwindow.

June 12 2015 : besides, moved by some thing. An intimate conversation on death and illness. Duration undetermined. No interaction with the public.

June 13 2015 : besides, Dear Body, Duration 3 minutes. With public chatwindow, so we can discuss afterwards.

19h CET – 1pm EDT – online bram.org/besides
Streaming Ivan Chabanaud / mosaika.tv

Three online experiments by Annie Abrahams and Martina Ruhsam, who will investigate the performative potential of computer-mediated performance. By listening to each other´s gestures (in a visual and acoustic sense) they will choreograph each other despite being geographically far away from each other – Annie will be in Montpellier, Martina in Berlin. More information (motivation, preparations, intentions, context, tests, images, bios)

“everything is on-the-fly, we don’t rehearse, we prepared technics and format together, content is taken care of individually – nothing can go wrong – we create experience … an encounter with the invisible public“

Filed under: performance, besides, commission, cyberformance, dear body, death and illness, Martina Ruhsam, NEA, some thing, turbulence.org