----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
dear all
John asked about the scope of interactive systems, as we generally refer to
such when we build them for a performance or an installation, and yes to that
extent
the scope is limited to artistic /social interactional ventures of the kind
that some of us have discussed here or that Simon just reported on earlier
(ADT's 'Multiverse'), or the workshops that Tamara had mentioned, or the
MotionComposer workshop I had written about yesterday.
>>I do feel, though, words like 'interaction' and 'virtual' hardly have any
>>intelligible relation to the nature of any shared reality, given their social
usage within the techno-sphere, even in the art/new media scene. [John]>>
Not sure I understand the way you are going, John, as obviously the workshop
with an interactive system (generating / affording manipulation by human
gesture in a room) that I refered to, held at La
Encendida in Madrid last Monday through Wednesday (www.lacasaencendida.es/) did
have an intelligible relation to a small shared reality, and even though I may
have reservations, it did afford
the kind of kinetic empathy that Simon felt was lacking for the spectators of a
dance concert (with 3D glasses handed out) in Australia; perhaps I should
subject the affordances to a closer scrutiny
and think about why the "virtual" is compromised differently for people (with
different dis/abilities) involved..... for us there, at that place, not
"everything was affected by interaction with everything else."
Now I read Sally Jane, and she comes back to the discussion we had in the first
week about assemblages and dispositifs, and I had tried to be clear why I used
the terms with caution, but also stated that I do not
necessarily believe that the system is us, or, worse (picking up on current
debates on big data, algorithmic machines, and amongst neuroscientist on the
neural dispositif and absconds gestural responsiblity) that the dispositifs
operate by their own account without that our actions or self insertions (say,
playing with MotionComposer, or watching Australian Dance Theatre's
"Multiverse") matter much or make a difference -- and the term you used, Sally
Jane,
namely agency, needs as much unpacking, perhaps, as the notion of a heterotopic
virtual embodiment. Unless of course we agree, first of all, that gestures are
human made (or animal made) and involve some sort
of social, political or psychological awareness of why one engages a dispositif
that is not us but may invite us (as - in the arts - it is programmed, such as
MotionComposer, by a collaborative effort between engineers,
composers, and choreographers who had a plan of why they constructed the
limited-scope interactional environment, for particular purpose).
Sally Jane, you mention "tessellated mixed reality" environments ("akin to
Foucault's heterotopia") - please could you give an example? And Karen Barad's
intra-actions (she is a physicist? and what on earth is "posthumanist
performativity," what gestures do we get here and by whom?, what are "“quantum
entanglements and hauntological relations" if remember some of Barad's
publications correctly ?....) , how are they different from interactions?
As to heterotopias, I think cemeteries are included by Foucault, no? I am gong
to a funeral on Friday, in the ancestral village in Germany, so shall look out
for the space and how it is changed, and who attends and how our behaviors and
alignments are legible.
respectfully
Johannes Birringer
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