Figure 1. Eva and Franco Mattes No fun 2006, performance art. Source: 0100101110101101.org 2017. Accessed 15 September. https://0100101110101101.org/no-fun/
Figure 2. Eva and Franco Mattes Reenactments: Impoderabilia, 2007. Video still of documentation of performance in Second Life. Accessed 15 September .http://0100101110101101.org/reenactment-of-marina-abramovic-and-ulays-imponderabilia/
Figure 3. Stelarc Ear on arm 2006, Engineering Internet Organ. Source: Stelarc 2017. Accessed 20 September. http://stelarc.org/?catID=20242
Figure 4. Stelarc Fractal flesh 1995, performance art.
Source: Medienkunstnetz 2015. Accessed 15 September. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/fractal-flesh/
The
dilution of locality in a globalised world
This essay discusses the dilution of locality in a
globalised world regarding social interaction, personal identity and
physicality in the digital age and how artist have engaged with the
global network of communication as a medium.
Eva and Franco Mattes explore the interplay
between the global and the local, identity and ethical issues that
arise through their works No fun (figure
1) and their second life performance
Reenactments:Impoderabilia (figure
2).
While Stelarc explores this interplay with issues
of bodily boundaries, the obsolence of the body and the resulting
identity issues through Ear on arm
(figure 3) and his performance Fractal
Flesh (figure 4)
Zygmunt Bauman defines 'globalised' as the
contraction of the dimensions of time and space and 'globalisation'
as the term for information and the social global network of
communication and for the problems arising from the economical and
political. Over the past decades our fascination of a future
exploring the frontiers of space has shifted to the frontiers of the
Internet. Where we can imagine leading whole lives disconnected from
the physical world (Cornish 2010 ).
According to Eric Schmidt the human race now generates as much
information as we did from the dawn of civilisation, never before
have we documented so little, so well. The rise of social media has
been the primary contributor and as a result of this technology at
our fingertips, we are more connected globally and disconnected
locally than ever before (Tardanico 2012). For Bauman 'local' is
defined as isolated and excluded from the globalized mainstream
community which is expressed in the dichotomous notions of here and
there, close or far (Wojtowicz 2010).
Over the last few years Eva and Franco Mattes
(also known as 0100101110101101.ORG ) have created some of the most
provocative Internet art, placing them among the pioneers of the Net
Art movement. The investigation of the avatar, social projection,
the dislocation of artist and beholder and the fabrication of
situations has been a primary concern in their practice.
The Mattes began an ongoing series called
Synthetic Performances in 2006 ( to present), where they
re-enacted seminal performance artworks using their avatars in Second
Life in front of a 'live' audience (Shindler
2010). The personal avatars used in the re-enactments have
been designed to mirror the phyiscal bodies of Eva and Franco Mattes.
They have re-enacted historical performances such as Vito Acconci's
"Seedbed" (1972), Gileber&George's "The Singing
Sculptures" (1968 – ongoing), Joseph Beuys's "7000 oaks"
(1982-1987), Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), Valie Export's
"Tapp und Tastkino" (1968-1971) and Marina Abramovich's
"Imponderabilia" (1977).
In 2007 artists Eva and Franco Mattes performed
Reenactments:Impoderabilia in Second Life (as part of the
Performa 07 Biennial) using avatars that resembled their real bodies.
The only modification made in this re-enactment is that the door
frame in which they stood did not lead into a museum. It did not lead
anywhere. The (approximately thirty) cyborgs who took part in the
performance by walking through the door frame were not doing so to
some other end; the virtual performance “event” was confined to
their encounter with the Mattes avatars’ naked bodies and the
conscious, and rather awkward, choice of how to engage with the
bodies in this virtual environment.
The avatars or simulated bodies are controlled in
first-life( real world) time and manually manipulated by users in the
first-life with in the Seconds Life's multi-user virtual environment.
The users and their avatars are thus situated in a
liminal space between the simulated and the living where time
functions in a virtual space that they exist within. The cyborg
character is created in this context, blending machine and man and
comprised of the human user and virtual avatar (Tyber 2014). In this
digital environment of Second Life the question is raised for the
spectator to reflect upon, what is left of the body ? (Ruffino 2009)
.
In No Fun, the Mattes staged a false
suicide for people on the social networking and video chat website
Chatroulette. As the websites name suggests, users are randomly
paired with strangers and can video chat with one another until
either of the participants decides to leave the chat and move on to
another random pairing. While broadcast on the Internet, the suicide
featured Franco's actual body, rather than that of an avatar, a key
to the element of realism and real time was that a portion of the
chat screen was visible, so that participants could see themselves in
realtime. The event was witnessed by scores of Chatrouletters, their
reactions were varied ranging from shock to disinterest, some in
disbelief, others laughed and insulted the corpse, while some took
photos with their mobile phones. It is important to not that some
were completely unmoved by what was before them, and only one, out of
several thousand, contacted the police.
As
it is unclear to the audience on Chatroulette as to the authenticity
of the event what they witnesses is closer in resemblance to subtle
ad-disruption. Exaggerating the
lack of real engagement and distance in online encounters, No Fun
creates a situation of the most dire loneliness, to slow down the
endless social media flux with a moment of absolute reality (Mattes
2010).
The work No
Fun
has
a dual existance as a live performance and to show the audiences
reaction to a secondary audience, a video document that original
performance . The video documentation is
a selected compilation of the Chatroulette users reaction to the
false suicide that had been presented to them (Tyber
2014).
In
No
Fun the
Mattes draw on the long history of
public performance art which plays on interactions and permission, in
this case the lack of permissions resulted in it being quickly banned
from YouTube. Tho the key to the success of No Fun was
its un-mediated interaction between an unsuspecting public and
the Mattes through the internet, with complete disregard for locality
during the entire interaction process.
Audience interactivity is an integral part of the
Mattes practice their definition of interactivity being associated
with the freedom that the user has to not only govern their own
movements but to duplicate, manipulate and simulate the subject
matter. The Mattes state "by their mouse clicks they choose one
of the routes fixed by the author(s), they only decide what to see
before and what after"
"the beholder becomes an artist and the
artist becomes a beholder: a powerless witness of what happens to his
work" (Baumgartel
1999). These concepts of interactivity suggesting that the virtual
space is comparable to the localised gallery space and visa versa as
one decided what space to view and when.
For
Stelarc his conceptual exploration focuses on posthumanist ideals of
disembodiment and transhumanism through remote conciousness. The
Platonic significance of a body being a prison for the soul, talks
about the Foucaultian means of controlling the body. There is someone
who is me and there is something that is my body, as soon as you say
'my body'. The body then becomes its own means of expression,
experimentation and experience . The virtual body, the machine body,
the biological body. 'The body' has become a fluid signifier, being
defined by whatever meaning we give it (Kalinowski 2013).
For
Stelarc the body can now perform beyond the boundaries of the local
space that it occupies. It can project its physical presence
elsewhere making the notion of a single agency problematic.
The
obsolesence and inadeqecies of the human body, motivated Stelarc to
construct the additional technological augmentations turning him
vessel for the conciousness of a remote entity. (TEDxVienna 2014).
Ear on Arm is a ten year ongoing
conceptual work in progress which has become an example of a new
technological body pushing Stelarc to explore transhumanism in new
ways.
Ear on Arm has involved the cultivation of
a prosthetic ear out of cartilage and cells, several surgeries, and
the insertion of a microphone and blue-tooth transmitter that would
wirelessly broadcast to the Internet the sounds of Stelarc and his
environment (Schwartzman 2015).It is located on his inner forearm,
which is anatomically an optimal site due to thin, smooth skin, and
ergonomically as there is a reduced risk of inadvertent damage. This
extention of the body sees the body extruding its awareness and
experience and acting as an extended operational system. Making the
ear a remote listening device for people in other places. For
example, someone in Venice could listen to what Stelarc's third ear
is hearing in Melbourne. This project has been about replicating a
bodily structure, relocating it and re-wiring it for alternate
functions. Stelarc is now extending this project to include a blue
tooth reciever and speaker which is positioned within his mouth. The
intention is so that he can receive a call 'inside' his head if his
mouth is closed or if someone is close to him and his mouth is open,
that person will hear the voice coming from the body. An acoustical
presence of another body from the body. Effectively transforming the
Ear on Arm into an Internet Organ (Stelarc. 2017).
.
For the “Telepolis” event in 1995,
participants in Paris (the Pompidou Centre), Amsterdam (for the Doors
of Perception Conference) and Helsinki (The Media Lab) were invited
to manipulate Stelarc's body for the performance Fractal Flesh in
Luxembourg. Fractal Flesh was
achieved though combining previous prosthetic art pieces Third
Hand and Involuntary body, a muscle-stimulation system and
a heads-up display which allowed Stelarc to view the person who was
manipulating him. Via a website these were electronically linked to a
remote access and view control panel interface which would enable
remote agents to manipulate Stelac's body (Stelarc 2015).
Participants remotely activated the
muscle-stimulation points on Stelarc's body via a remote access
producing involuntary movements and were able to view the results on
a view control panel.
There was a one
second delay due to the technology available at the time between the
participant input and Stelarc's physical response. Images were live
streamed via two computers and viewed in South east Asia, North
America and Europe (Curtin University 2014).
Fractal Flesh
is the concept that spactially separated bodies and body parts are
electronically connected. Therefore issues are raised with the
authenticity of unique individuality, the individual is rather the
multiplicity of the remote participants that it hosts are raised
through the remote muscle-stimulation of the body. The body can now
project its physical presence through other bodies and machines,
becoming a chimera of metal, code and meat . The body, currently
know as Stelarc,due to the nature of prosthetic and
muscle-stimulation has been converted into an avatar for the
multitude of manipulators (Stelarc 2012). As described by Donna
Haraway, the body (Stelarc) becomes a hybrid creature, particularly
when controlled remotely by a female agent. Pushing closer to the
posthumanism ideals, the body simply becomes hardware.
Eva and Franco Mattes and Stelarc
explore the dilution of locality in a globalised world through their
artistic exploration . In
the Mattes's works No
Fun and
Reenactments:Impoderabilia, the
primary
medium is sociality, but are not typical bodies, conversation, or
even proximity, but rather a mutual feeling of local spatial
confusion as participants connect and disconnect to view the
performances. The in
Reenactments:Impoderabilia
a cyborg character is created blending machine and man and comprised
of the human user and virtual avatar propting the spectator to
reflect upon, what is left of the body ?
For
Stelarc in fractal flesh and
Ear on arm the body is no longer bound and limited by
its skin and is not limited to the local space that it occupies. The
body is made up of multiple agents performing beyond its skin and
beyond the local space that it inhabits. The body is now fractal
flesh, bits of bodies which are electronically connected, generating
reoccuring patterns of connectivity at varying scales.
The remote participant is now transhuman
as they interact with the body...
List
of References
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