ART NETWORK DISCUSSION
In greater connectivity do emergent network technologies
also deny spatial difference? What is the abstract space of the network. I have
used some of my images which strike a cord for me as abstract space networking
between the social and the private.
I was
asked to write a chapter for the recent publication from Queensland University
of Technology which I have used to create the basis for this paper.
I have
been interested in networks since 1983 when Media-Space, a Perth based art
research group, proposed a national arts network that would confront the
Ôtyranny of distanceÕ experienced by artists working in Western Australia.
The
Media-Space group was one of the first to linked through a global art network
called ARTEX.
ARTEX had
succeeded in focusing a number of artists from around the world into developing
thematic networked art projects using the IPSharpÕs ARTBOX. The early network
group projects create a euphoric feeling of connectivity which I still
experience today. ARTEX linked me with artists like Roy Ascott who founded in
1994 the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA), which was
a world-wide trans-disciplinary research community. Its innovative structure
involves collaborative work and supervision: both in cyberspace and at regular
meetings around the world. Nearly 20 years later than the initial online
discussions Ascott was a key partner in the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth
2002
One of
the first of AscottÕs art works in this area was Ôworld in 24 hoursÕ (1982),
where he created a planetary throw of the I CHING. He wrote, Ôcomputer-mediated
networks in my view, offer the possibility of a kind of planetary conviviality
and creativity which no other means of communication has been able to achieve.
One reason may be that networking puts you, in a sense, out of body, linking
your mind into a kind of timeless seaÕ (Ascott 1984 pg 29).
There is
now serious attention being paid to networks for purposes of research. The
Australian Research Centre, Research Networks discussion paper (2003) is a
timely move to instigate and develop innovation within this area. What I want
to do in this paper is compare Roy Ascotts 1984 vision with the ARC Research
Networks document to see what can be discovered about our changing
understanding of networks.
The
discussion paper states ÔAt
present, the program elements in the National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP)
tend to under-emphasise the importance of network formation, with
insufficiently strong support and incentives for individual researchers and
small research teams to extend their connections with other researchers and
those involved in innovation more widelyÕ (ARC 2003).
So by way of contrast, in 1984 Roy Ascott had written,
Telematics has arisen an ethos of cross-disciplinary
science and is set within a cybernetic perspective of the world. Numerous
writers have attempted to describe the enormous changes they see occurring in
human awareness, which some see as a kind of planetary consciousness. Teilhard
de Chardin imagined a noosphere, a thinking layer, enveloping the biosphere of
the earth. Peter Russell has more recently advanced the hypothesis of the
emergence of a planetary brain, (Ascott 1984 pg 50-51)
These
comment some two decades ago illustrated the potential of the network. The ARC
Research Networks document now indicates that there is need to extend research
teams so that they make more meaningful and innovative connections. However
there are also concerns that need to be addressed about the network momentum
today. Is it just becoming a platform for e-commerce or an online learning
environment? What was suggested in 1984 was that Ôinformation exchanges
shuttling through the networks at any one time can create patterns of coherence
in the global brain, similar to those of the human brainÕ (Ascott 1984 pg 51). The network seems to have
stalled in regards to the ideas of our expanded consciousness and education in
the arts has not yet grasped the potential of this medium.
Ascott wrote for one of the first Australian publications
ÔArt and TelecommunicationsÕ, which was published in 1984, Ascotts article is
one that I want to focus on as a basis for telematic network research (Telematic networks are
computerised telecommunications systems) thinking at that time.
To the unconvinced, the artist who commits himself or
herself to networking as a primary medium is playing with dreams (Ascott 1984 p52)
That I would see as the grand aspiration of networking in
art, where the art work, the transformations of Ôcreative dataÕ, are in
perpetual motion, an unending process. In this sense art itself becomes not a
discrete set of entities, but rather a web of relationships between ideas and
images in constant flux, to which no single authorship is attributable and
whose meanings depend on the active participation of whoever enters the
network. In a sense there is one wholeness, the flow of the network in which
every ideas is a part of every other idea, in which every participant receiver is
such that a mirror image is exchanged in which sender is receiver and receiver
sender. (Ascott 1984 p 56)
These references are used to create a comparison between
the 1984 publication and an online networked mediated discussion set up in
2003. The texts will be used and drawn on to discover where the innovations
within networking could be focused.
Don
Foresta a contemporary of Ascott who developed network projects working in
Paris in the early 80Õs stated recently that, ÒThe
organizational space is at the same time a communication space, a visual space,
an intuitional space, the space we call imagination and the way we see things
operating. It will probably be at least another generation or two before we
have consensus on the shape of that space, but if we are to believe what art
and science have been saying, it is probable that that space will exist in
time, be an interactive process and organised horizontally with a geometry
quite different from the Euclidian geometry of renaissance perspectiveÓ. (Foresta
1997)
This statement was written in 1997 as part of The Souillac Charter for Art and Industry, were a
small group of specialists met in Souillac, France to draft a charter proposing
a dialogue between artists and the telecommunications industry, with
governments and international organisations, on the importance of artistic
creativity and the new forms of expression available through advances in
telecommunications.
Ascott states, ÒTelematics does
not generate a new order of art discourse but demands a new form of criticism
and analysisÓ. (Ascott 1984 pg 44)
I was
interested to see if euphoria which I had first experienced in the 1983 project
ÒAustralia 2003Ó where Tom Klinkowstein demonstrated the ArtistÕs Electronic
Exchange System (ARTEX) to the experimental art group Media-Space still existed
within networking. The ÒAustralia
2003Ó project organised by Eric Gidney in Sydney, linked up Òan exchange of
telefax images which took place in April 1983 between students in Sydney,
Adelaide and PerthÓ. (Gidney 1984 pg 16) I was looking for evidence as to
whether there was still a sense of wonder and euphoria in regards to artistic
networking. In this sense the context of Ascotts terms for the total experience
of working with the new technologies when he stated that ÒWork at the interface
of the network, at a console with keyboard. VDU, printer or plotter is, in
itself sensuously satisfying: the rhythm of the printer, the unrolling of the
paper, the glow of the CRT, the secret stillness and precision of the software,
immaculately delicate responsiveness of the keyboard, the whirring and bleeping
of control signals can induce moods which can excite enthusiastic expectancy or
a meditative tranquillity.Ó (Ascott 1984 pg 54)
ARC Research Networks will assist groups of researchers to
coordinate and communicate their research activities across disciplinary, organisational,
institutional and geographical boundaries. The program will encourage and fund open exchange of
information and sharing of resources, development and implementation of
coherent and integrated research plans among researchers working independently
on topics of common interest, and efforts to nurture the careers of young
investigators and research students by promoting a sense of community and
strong, effective mentoring. (ARC 2003)
This is in stark contrast with some of the thoughts of Ascott and
his contemporaries. The euphoria connected with networking seemed to have given
way to the politics of cyberspace. In order to make it part of a corporate and
educational system, it denies its own spatial potential for a redefinition of
our consciousness spatial understanding.
The thought that 100,000 students listening to the same lecture is
again a common idea that is used to negate the real research needed to be done
in the area of creativity within
networks. The misunderstanding predicates the one on one learning environment
as being more important than this form of mediated knowledge, without looking
into what is constituted through virtual studio spaces. There seems to be a
lack of research of the space of the network ÒÉfew theorists have yet studied
networks because they are evanescent, ebbing and flowing around issues, ideas
and knowledgeÓ (Ascott 1984 p 52)
There is a desire to define rules that can be placed on and within
the network. The context is based in the networks relationship to the arts,
where the unpredictable and unmanageable are part of its very nature of being.
The use of ÔnormaliseÕ in connection with the network places the emphasis back
on the user to define for themselves its social status.
The question of innovation in networking was part of the strategy
to determine the relationship art has with researching the network as a
creative medium for expression.
The concept of seeing the network as having a connection to a
collective memory which is its database. The consumption of the database memory
is developing forms of consciousness. These concepts puts the networks in a
space of needing to develop new ideas of visualising memory, with the problem
being that spatial metaphors, in fact, are not about space they are key
indicators to a spatial discussion but they are not the space.
To give
an example online educational environments seem to ignore questions concerning
the spatial potential of a research network. To explore the environment of the
network is difficult ÒIf not impossible, to fully appreciate the importance of
telecommunications, not only as space and time transcending technologies, but
as technological networks within which new forms of human interaction, control
and organisation can actually be constructedÓ (Marvin 1996 pg 54)
The
architectural structure, the physical presence of educational facilities has
been potentially under threat with independent soft skilled people using
convergent networked technologies to bypass the system. The innovation that
could happen within the research network area needs to be given more research
time to explore the questions of spatiality within the arts agenda.
There are
many reasons for this focus but the main one relates to Roy AscottÕs
description of a planetary consciousness. With wearable wireless networks,
students can link into this Ônoosphere, a thinking layerÕ, Ôa planetary brainÕ.
The main concern is that the network has become an immersive screen of text
which, when linked to the computers ability to cut and paste, can reproduce
itself endlessly without any critical dimension. The Ôthinking layerÕ that
could be the networked world is not being researched in an art context beyond
its practical display of information between nodes and e-learning. What Ascott referred to in 1984 was the
potential of exploring concepts of network art. ÒTo ÔunderstandÕ what is going on in the transactional
process of network art is to merge the waves of planetary inputs, the
modulation of ideas passed around the multiplicity of terminals, and to
identify with the patterns of change which surge through the lines of
communicationÓ (Ascott 1984 pg 36)
The
network has not discovered its own spatiality, and the flat space of the screen
in which it appears only camouflages this spatiality. The screen with its
relationship to perspectival space only allows the viewer a privileged
understanding of a paradigm of seeing.
Paul
Virlio states that ÒHe mourns the destruction of distance, geographic grandeur,
the vastness of natural space, the vastness which guaranteed time delay between
events and our reactions, giving us time for the critical reflection necessary
to arrive at a correct decisionÓ. (Manovich 1996) The destruction of distance has
happened; we are connected; the organic thinking layer is waiting and in its
place is the institutional layering. . Questions need to be asked how this
network affects our understanding of the world. How do we develop critical
reflection in the area with this new spatial fabric that lacks the distancing
of conventional critical creative space?
According
to Michael Heim ÒBesides function, another aspect of the formal definition of
ÔworldÓ is that it is a context or weaving-together of things. World makes a
web-like totality. The web gives context to anything that happens within it.
World is a total environment or surround space.Ó (Heim 1998 pg 91)
There is
obvious renewed interest in research networks in Australia and possibilities of
the network are there still there to be explored. These possibilities that were
envisaged by Ascott are not necessarily gone. I think the need for spatial
research of the network and the human conscious experience issues reference
through Ascott and Foresta are where the primary work needs to be done. Foresta
stated that ÒIt will probably be at least another generation or two
before we have consensus on the shape of that spaceÓ,
There is
the possibility in that digital network has served its short time, it will be
replaced and this would be through the development of Nano technologies, we
will be embarking on much more invasive concept of networks. Intimated when
Ascott spoke about the development of networks through the Òengagements of
creative minds in telematic systems will effect human consciousness and
transform our cultureÓ. (Ascott 1984 pg 52)
The work being done by artists within the SymbioticA
research studio in the human biology department at the University of Western
Australia are exploring some of these concerns through their MEART project.
ÒWe recorded the electric signals
(neural activity) from the culture in Atlanta. These neurons are cultured over
60 electrodes fitted on a glass substrate. These electrodes pick up 60 channels
of activity from the neurons.
The data received from the neural activity is
processed both in Atlanta & Perth to control in real time the robotic
(drawing) arm. The feedback loop is closed by stimulating the neurons (again,
60 electrodes, 60 different areas in the culture) when various events in the gallery
space occur. In biofeel we had MEART "draw portraits". Each morning
we captured an image of a visitor in the gallery. Then we degraded it to 60
Pixels that correlated to the 60 electrodes that stimulate the neurons. We used
this blue print to constantly stimulate the neurons.Ó (SYMBIOTICA
2003)
This is a
clear link to what Ascott was talking about when neurons were stimulated
through the network to drive robotÕs. Ascott said ÒThe creative use of networks
makes them organisms.Ó
(Ascott 1984 pg 56)
I want to
conclude by saying that I feel there is still time left to explore the space of
the network. It is not over but there is little time. The global network that
Ascott wrote about I think will be come more a series of local nodes pulling together b igger
conepts whilst working on the local distribution networks. Network will evolve
like the development of the brain through sympaththetic senses.
Internet references:
Planetary
Collegium
http://www.planetary-collegium.net
ARC, A. R. C. (2003). ARC research networks discussion paper.
http://www.arc.gov.au/grant_programs/centres_networks/research_networks.htm
Ascott, R. (1984). Art and Telematics - Towards a Network Consciousness. Art and Telecommunications. H. Crundmann. Vancouver, A Western Front Publication.
Foresta, D. (1997). Souillac Charter, Mit Press. 1997.
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/articles/souillac/malvy.html
Gidney, E. (1984). The Artist's Use of Telecommunications. Art and Telecommunications. H. Crundmann. Vancouver, A Western Front Publication.
Heim, M. (1998). Virtual Realism. New York, Oxford University Press.
Manovich, L. (1996). Cinema and Telecommunication /Distance and Aura.
Marvin, S. G. a. S. (1996). Telecommunications and the City. London, Routledge.
SYMBIOTICA (2003). MEART. 2004.
http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/