Saturday, September 18, 2010

Keetra Dean Dixon (FromKeetra) - Just Between You and Me: Objects of Co-dependency, 2008

Just Between You and Me, 2008
Again, some of these operate on more of a symbolic level than an experiential one but are worth considering regardless.

All images and info taken from the designer's website [new link], except the balloon demo below, which came from Design Boom.

Keetra Dean Dixon (FromKeetra) - To-gather Together series

http://fromkeetra.com/posts.php?post=091

My evolving definition sees relational prosthetics (RPs) as straddling the boundary between generating symbolic meaning and facilitating participatory experience.  Assuming that the All-i-pops are not to be actually consumed, knowing that the hat/shoes piece (How about a little support?!) is near impossible to use, and seeing that the connected shirts piece (3shirt ---> Dress for the occasion) and the phone (Earphone) are likely meant only to be looked at, these pieces by FromKeetra are moving more toward the symbolic end of the spectrum.

Keetra Dean Dixon (FromKeetra) - Anonymous Hugging Wall, 2008

An edition in the ongoing series METHODS & APPARATI for Social Facilitation and Mood Elevation.
All images and information from the artist's website.


Friday, September 17, 2010

Jenny LC Chowdhury - Intimate Controllers (in progress)

All images and info from the artist's website.  Her practice:
My work is the bastard child of an engineering education, a suppressed desire to be an artist and an unwavering interest in pranks. I suppose that means that my work has three parents. 

Whether in the form of a website, installation, cellphone application or a performance, my projects call attention to how technology has altered the ways in which people communicate with each other and their surrounding environment. A New York City native, my work often involves applying and manipulating technology in the bustling cityscape of which i am so fond.  
I'm currently finishing my masters' work at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and hope to continue producing thought provoking, amusing work.
Intimate Controllers:
In development, Intimate Controllers, in its current manifestation allows two participants to play a simple video game whose play is similar to Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero except that the control interface is embedded in undergarments.  Each player's controller is worn by the other and as the game progresses each participant touches their partner in increasingly intimate areas.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Communications (Alex McLean and EunJoo Shin) - Microphone, 2010

http://issuu.com/tintarts/docs/unleashed_devices_catalague [sic]



Stumbled upon this piece through some random clicking on facebook: photo of a friend of an acquaintance, below.

Microphone is Communications [sic] first work making its debut at Unleashed Devices, and providing [sic] a means of oral, yet pre-linguistic communication.  Mouthed vowels are transmitted across the gallery between participants, so that physical symbolic connections are felt between sound and movements of the mouth, free from lexical constructs.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Helmets - Prototype1 Documentation

My Early Hunch/Interest - Toward a Thesis Proposal

Extracted from an email to my thesis advisor/committee:


Here’s what I’m thinking.  As you may remember, I call my current body of work Relational Prosthetics, which I define tentatively as any physical object/interface whose primary function is to initiate and/or facilitate a face-to-face interaction/encounter, or at least a physically proximal engagement, between two or more people [also see here].  There is (at least) a smattering of such objects/artworks that fit this description in a fine art context throughout today’s contemporary art world and recent history (I don’t think I would look much earlier than 1960…maybe see if the Dadaists did anything of the sort?).  Without suggesting that these items ought necessarily comprise a new subgenre of interactive sculpture or performance (or whatever other genre or art field) I would like to consider these as a group to see what might be said about them.

I'd actually like to retract, for now, the qualification "Without suggesting that these items ought necessarily comprise a new subgenre..."  It's too early to rule that out.  The sculptors, performance artists, thespians, musicians and film-makers/writers have arrived at similar objects from very different disciplines; maybe it would be profitable to link them with a common appelation so they are not isolated by their originating disciplines that they can't speak to each other.

I would tentatively call this group by the same moniker I’m using for my own work, relational prosthetics, but would be open to revising the label as my research requires.  I would do/give a cursory survey of various artworks by various artists (Franz Erhard Walther, Lygia Clark, Robert Morris, Valie Export, and more recent artists such as David Cross, Miranda July, Erwin Wurm [Rotozaza, Krysztof Wodiczko, Maya Suess, Matthias Gommel, Lucky Dragons] etc.) briefly comparing their apparent aims and means.  I would also draw on other disciplines (such as the sociological and anthropological thought of Erving Goffman and Edward Hall, the extended aesthetics of Katya Mandoki, and the theological perspective of Martin Buber [also, the theory of medical prosthetics, and Marshall McLuhan's thinking on 'the extensions of man'])  to suggest new ways of talking about what these art works do.  A tentative title for the paper would be something like Relational Prosthetics: towards a vocabulary of object enabled (and constrained) interpersonal engagement in art.
 
I am confident that the topic is pertinent not only to my own practice but, if done well, could be important to current discourse surrounding relational aesthetics and the burgeoning field of social practice.  While many of the works discussed would not typically be identified with these realms of the art world they nevertheless have much in common, and their unique mixture of materiality and relationality places them in the potentially bridge-building position straddling the object-centered studio/gallery paradigm and the more ephemeral, immaterial realm of social practice.  

The next paragraph was put in parentheses because I was unsure about its relevance.  I think I expressed well enough that I will likely not address the issue(s) directly and I still feel that way. Consequently I am now working on better articulating the importance of this research 

(Claire Bishop, in her important essay, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” registers one of the more legitimate complaints against discursive art.  She claims, rightly that aesthetic concerns have been hijacked by political and moral ones.  Not that there is anything inherently wrong with such aims but she claims that critics and audiences have given these works a sort of free pass aesthetically because they have good intentions.  I view this objection to current social practice as one of the more serious complaints that needs to be addressed, and while I am not entirely sure my thesis will address the issue head on, I suspect that developing a vocabulary around these art works that straddle the aesthetic and social realms might offer a hint of a way forward.  At the very least my paper and the collected works being referred to as relational prosthetics could serve as an entry point to relational art for critics and audiences more accustomed to traditional static arts.)

At times I fear that my scope is too broad, that I’m taking on too much for a one-year process.  So I’m writing to see what you think.  Am I right to have reservations?  Do you think the topic is a good one?  Would you shift the focus much?  Can you help me think about possible methodologies?  
Another reservation I have--or a potential weakness of this project--is the fact that I have little to no direct participatory experience with any of the artworks in question.  Is this an insurmountable weakness?  How can I tailor the project to accommodate this unfortunate and (in the short term) irremediable problem?

Monday, September 6, 2010

Matthias Gommel - Delayed, 2002

From Medien Kunst Netz:




Two Headsets are hanging from the ceiling. Microphones record speach which can be heard via the head phones. Both sets are linked so that one can hear the other speaker. The communication, however, is realized with a three second delay. The perception of one's own act is being detached from its execution. All perception of the world is in a way with a time delay, made perceivable through this transparent delay.
Presented in the context of the exhibition «Son Image» at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, 2003.

Relational Prosthetics - Working Definition #1

Any physical object/interface whose primary function is to initiate and/or facilitate a face-to-face interaction/encounter--or at least a physically proximal engagement--between two or more people.


Some terms/phrases for further consideration (many taken from the quote from the previous post on Walther):


-active manipulation
-simple-use items
-"the sum of the object and the activation by the viewer...constituted the whole sculpture or work."

Franz Erhard Walther - Werksatz No. 1 (First Workset), 1963-69

Franz Erhard Walther, Für Zwei (Nr. 31, 1.Werksatz) [For Two], 1967.
Courtesy of fe walther foundation+archives and Peter Freeman, Inc., New York.

 From What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art:
When he began Werksatz No. 1 (First Workset) in 1963, Franz Erhard Walther created objects from fabric or other industrial materials that were intended to be brought to life by a spectator's active manipulation.  Often resembling simple-use items such as clothing, slippers, bags, pockets, and satchels, the objects offered a range of variation and playfully set off an engagement with distance, loseness, time, dimesions, and body language.  In Walther's conception, all of the components of the orkset existed to be played, worn, moved, carried, or lifted depending on the circumstances of the project.  Sometimes the works were desgned for one person at a time, sometimes several people were needed, but in each case, it was the sum of the object and the activation by the viewer that constituted the whole sculpture or work.
 http://www.cacbretigny.com/inhalt/few.html
        Walther's work offers a model for understanding the shifting role of audience participation in the process and meaning of contemporary art.  By utilizing skills required to give visual form to intellectual and emotional experience, it provides and arena for understanding how 'process' is art.  Once viewers are physically involved, they cease to be spectators and become participants (and thus a portion of the sculptures).  For Walther, this did not mean that the person/sculpture became an object; on the contrary, they remained a subject, just as the work came alive and was given bodily form. 
While Walther is clearly coming from a sculpture background and addressing/challenging issues native to that realm, the pieces in Werksatz No. 1 that involve more than one person align almost perfectly with my working definition of a relational prosthetic.  Some of his pieces also bear a striking resemblance to some of my own work.  Having learned of their existence after creating my first relational prosthetics (I'm thinking here especially of my Box intervention), it was exciting to find someone who had addressed face-to-face encounters in a somewhat similar formal manner.
Franz Erhard Walther « 1.Werksatz », 1963-1969 58 objects, Sockel, 1969 Exhibition view: Living currency, Tate Modern, London, 2007 Photos by Sheila Burnett.  From http://www.galeriewolff.com/site/artists_detail.php?uid=17&image_id=3

social practice blurb

From Portland State University's Art and Social Practice MFA website:

Social practice might appear to be more like sociology, anthropology, social work, journalism, or environmentalism than art, yet it retains the intention of creating significance and appreciation for audiences in a similar way to more conventional art.