Josephine Bosma on Wed, 17 Dec 1997 22:48:52 +0100 (MET) |
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<nettime> net, 'radio' and physical space: FAKESHOP |
This interview is part of a series of email interviews about the what, why and how of audio and the net. They are focussed on whether this can also be connected to physical spaces, to see if we could get more people to enjoy net.radio and participate in it in various ways, instead of only the few with the right connections. Fakeshop is an electronic arts and performance warehouse space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and also a Virtual place, an online meeting ground for multi-media international collaboration. They have conducted many experiments in CUseeme collaboration. The most important part is the active link between remote locations. < -- -- -- -- + -- -- -- -- > / | \/ |____|____|/______\\FAKESHOP >|____||____|> _.-"""""-._ JB: Since when are you involved in net.casting, and is it audio or video mostly? shopworker Jeff: Since 3 years ago. The FPU group was founded to explore the new computerspecific strategies of electronic audio/visual transfer. Important to the group from the beginning was the transfer of experiential information being collected at the site of production, (namely "site specific" installation environments), to a remote recieving, or reciprocally retransmitting audience or collabortional link. First experiments with were with Cuseeme, expanding into other software applications such as; Picture-tel, Internet-phone, Tibuktu, etc. JB: Is this because you merely wanted a larger audience? Thats what it sounds like... shopworker Jeff: Its no secret that the web has offered artists, performative and otherwise, an expanded sphere of exposure. That is merely one side effect of working in this way, as in any broadcasting or publishing medium. The work I have been involved with involving remote linkups has sought to explore the medium for more than just its lure of a "larger audience". I hope some evidence of that is left in the archive of works available online. JB: Are you interested in it from an art point of view, or do you also use it as kind of tactical, low access medium? We are equally interested in both sides of that coin.. JB: can you give examples what kind of performances there happened and by whom? shopworker Jeff: The first few performances have been from a work in progress by the Fakeshop group. Still without a title, it consists of scenes from films, presented live with actors/actresses as well as audio/visual re-digestation. Four scenes so far, two from Fahrenheit 451, and one from Coma. Coming up will be a scene from Solaris, & THX-1138. during those pieces we have been simultaneously broadcasting some element of the performance on Webcam (Live on the site) as well as Cuseeme. We make no claims as to the satisfactory accomplishments of that part of the operation, as our technology is still limited. >|____||____|> _.-"""""-._ ,' `. \ | Living Scenery, | | | \ Music from Films, / `. ,' `-..__ ..-' JB: I like your taste in movies, but: why re-do scenes from movies... and then such typical techno-paranoia sf-stuff? About the influence of cinema: cinema was the ultimate indulgement in image/visuals as sensory seducers, as kind of amplification of that particular sense which in humans is so overdeveloped, compared to other mamals. We tend to trust so much more on what we see then on what we experience otherwise (directly or indirectly), that we are easily fooled by it. It seems to me that with the appearance of tv this characteristic of vision was revealed rather then amplified, and with the net this is even more so. Other aspects of art and reality, (society/economy/politics) become more transparant, once one is used to the medium more and more. shopworker Jeff: To answer this question I will tell you a little story. The name Fakeshop is "lifted" from a line in a book by Alain Robbe- Grillet. He is perhaps my favorite writer. Recently in re-reading Baudrillards' Simulations, I came across this passage which helps me explain to myself why I like Robbe Grillet so much, and also why I like to "re-do scenes from movies". ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ P.141 "To exist from the crisis of representation, you have to lock up the real in pure repitition. Before emerging in pop art and pictorial neo-realism, this tendency is at work already in the new novel. The project is already there to empty out the real, extirpate all psychology, all subjectivity, to move the real back to pure objectivity. In fact this objectivity is only that of the pure look -objectivity at last liberated from the object, that is nothing more than the blind relay station of the look which sweeps over it. Circular seduction where you can detect easily the unconscious desire of no longer being visible at all. This is certainly the impression that the new novel leaves: this rage for eliding sense in a minute and blind reality. Syntax and semantics have dissapeared-there is no longer apparition, but instead supoena of the object, severe interrogation of its scattered fragments-neither metaphor nor metonymy: successive immanence under the policing structure of the look. This "objective" minuteness arouses a vertigo of reality, a vertigo of death on the limits of reperesentation-for-the-sake-of-representation. End of the old illusions of relief, perspective and depth (spatial and psychological) bound to the perception of the object:it is the entire optic;the view become operational on the surface of things, it is the look become molecular code of the object." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ JB: Tell me if I am wrong, maybe I am looking too much for underlying theories, but could your 'cinema' performances with the choice of the scenes you do, be some expression of discomfort and (what we call) healthy paranoia with certain powerstructures behind the development of technology? Like who is it ultimately *really* developed for? shopworker Jeff: No you're not wrong, I think you are correct in this assumption. fakeshop pr: >Currently we are having an audience of about 100 people in physical >attendance and the goal is to explore the possibilities of a virtual >audience, preferably "seating" people in different countries during >simultaneously held openings, events etc. JB: Why do you want a seated audience? The installation/environments that we are building are becoming more and more theatrical in nature. When everything is plugged in and humming, it takes a live audience to close the feedback loop. JB: With whom do you collaborate? shopworker Jeff: So far at the Fakeshop we have hosted two colloborators outside the core group. The first was a Project by Marc Hungerbuehler, "Placenta Sister Republics", which presented a simultaneous CUseeme view of two placentas (both saved from childbirth of his children), one installed at the shop in New York, and one at a gallery in Tokyo. The documentation for this event is online at the website under "Import-Export". The second collaborational group was presented on Dec 6, '97, "Adrift", by Marek Walzcak, Helen Thorrington, and Jesse Gilbert. a link to their info. is on the site now on the opening page. / | \New York/Austria/Real Time Hookup / | \VRML/Sound/TEXT/Space | / | \ |< -- -- -- -- + -- -- -- -- > -- \ / -- |____|"A New Work Evolving in a Networked Digital Medium" |____|by Jesse Gilbert, - -- >Helen Thorrington, and - -- >Marek Walczak|____|--------|____|> JB: How are your experiences with ether/cable radio or tv? Any different from online radio/audio or video? shopworker Jeff: We are relative newcomers to both mediums, coming from a more traditional art background in which the process of publication is a much less performative thing, but consists of more solid matter. In both Cable and Online broadcasting it seems to me the object is very ephemeral, but potentially much more public. But this publicness is very abstract until the corporations want to pay to have you archived in the tape space left over between their commercials. I mean that web work is very ephemeral until some powerful organization decides that the work is worth archiving for posterity, or publicizing with their logo underneath it, or banner above it. JB: you seem to be having a weekly show allready, is this connected to a space for audience? We are having a weekly gathering in real space, but the online space is not inhabited yet. fakeshop pr: >Currently we have been "squatting" on >the brazilian reflector: >139.82.17.17 (Brazil) Rio Internet TV JB: Why did you 'squat' on a reflector, is it otherwise impossible to do what you want? shopworker Jeff: Out of neccesity we must pick a destination for other people to meet us on. It is really not an ideal situation, but since we haven't been able to find a host reflector, it seemed like the best choice. One of the problems is with nudity, because our work includes the use of the human (male and female) body. As the online world is currently being split into two camps, one of the pornographers and one of the paranoids of pornography, it is difficult to be able to participate in the artistic use of the naked body without falling into one of these two camps. For this as well as many other reasons we want to find a reflector site donated by a University of something that would be friendly to theatrical and artistic experiments without censorship. http://www.fakeshop.com/ Documentation of some early FPU work can be found at http://www.thing.net/~floating performance Adrift: http://www.fakeshop.com/home/saturday.html Where?: 90 North 11th st Williamsburg Bklyn. |____|>|____|> 718.486.7009 >|____||____| </body> </html> Fadeout * --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de