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Like other contemporary
multimedia art forms, Superbad by Ben Benjamin15
weaves together graphics, images, text and a multitude of references
to popular culture. Yet this work departs from the conception of previous
multimedia art in the nature of its organisation. While the strict rational
basis of perspectival art structures the viewing experience by the strong
linear structure, and art subsequent to this was liberated from this
rational construction to instead allow a simultaneous, yet still unchanging
experience, the cyber medium permits a complete escape from fixed Renaissance
perspectival structure. In Superbad, the entry point, the home
page, is changed on a daily basis and the sequence by which the viewer
travels through the work evolves and reorganises itself in an unpredictable
manner. As the experience is also determined by the decision-making
and physical actions of the viewer, Superbad is experienced in
a unique manner on each encounter with each individual viewer, and so
the conception of the work is slightly different each time.
Such exploration
of the diverse possibilities for representing our experience of the world
that are available in cyber multimedia, and the experimentation with the
potential of a non-linear and non-structured medium16
characterise these Cyberart works. They allow the medium to provide an
element of choice for viewers in the manner in which they engage with the
works, and this self-determination is integral to Mark Amerika's
Grammatron.17
The simultaneous experience of a range of diverse media permitted by the
integration of text, image, movement and sound by the Internet18
is something that novelist Darcey Steinke engages in Blindspot,19
in which she examines the possibilities of translating the linear, text-based
medium of the literature to the Internet by means of which she is able
to compose a non-linear work where a single story is interwoven with 19
shorter stories that are experienced concurrently. The effect of this art
is to blur the boundaries between the individual disciplines and to provide
a simultaneous experience of the narratives.
In addition to exploring
the constituent forms of the cyber medium, Cyberart also examines the
content of and the nature in which the medium is utilised. The internet
is commonly perceived as a tool for sharing information, yet there is
often a disjunction of the body from the machines between which the
fibreoptic lines and satellite beams convey the information. E-mail
depersonalises communication by removing many of the inflections inherent
in a hand-written communication. While communication by phone retains
an explicit human presence at either end, this is often lost in the
electronic domain. The theme of man-as-machine, exploring an alternative
dehumanised cyber-landscape, is the issue of Grammatron. It suggests
this phenomenon by providing a genderless, digital body as the vehicle
for the viewer's experience of this cyber-world, an 'info-shaman' that
is seen as a prototype for man-machines such as cyborgs.20
Similarly, Redsmoke by Lew Baldwin21
has a 'programmed' worker as the figure with whom the viewer identifies.
While the internet
is a more advanced channel for interpersonal communication, the depersonalisation
inherent in the medium often establishes a false sense of authority.22
Ken Goldberg's Ouija 200023
critiques the mystification of new technology such as the internet by
invoking a spiritual ritual, intoning "push aside the keyboard
/ dim the lights / grasp the mouse gently with both hands". He
challenges the notion that the medium is more than just a communication
device, and satirises an uncritical reliance on the Internet as a source
of information. Fakeshop24
explores how the new possibilities of the internet can foster the development
and creation of other art media, in this case music. The work also explores
the unique broadcast and archival potential of the internet, and the
possibilities that arise for global communication and collaboration
with other musicians. ®TMark25
plays with the commercialised nature of the internet and undermines
its ubiquitous corporate presence.
Body and Media
Having considered
examples of the operation of the medium of Cyberart, resultant changes
in the dynamic between media and body can be now be examined. These are
primarily a consequence of the vastly increased speed of electric media,
and the transition that has occurred from mechanism to automation.
The operation of the media
has developed at a giddying pace in recent decades. Art was initially
an object-based medium and was restricted to its local presence. The
dissemination of information about art was constrained by the physical
pathways available to transport the object, or manual reproductions
of the object. As an object-based medium, art inevitably had a spatial
presence, occupying a certain space and remaining constant over time.26
The onset of electronic communication of information with advent of
the telegraph and then the "wireless' radio allowed the message
for the first time to travel faster than it could be carried by a human
messenger.27
While this allowed the content of the art-medium, often a narrative,
to be transmitted more easily, the medium itself remained immobile.
The potential for the mass reproduction of the art object, described
by Benjamin as an increased intervention of technical means in these
processes, also contributed to a decline of the aura,28
destroying the singularity and authority upon which the work of art
is dependent. This contributes to a decline in the distance between
viewer and medium and Benjamin claims that "Above all, it enables
the original to meet the beholder halfway".29
While television
and film were communication media that were still fixed in space and temporally
discrete, the advent of live broadcast permitted a mode of communication
that could share a contemporaneous existence with the viewer. While these
media allowed the viewer to interact momentarily with the medium, this
was possible only on the local level.30
However, when art became liberated from the object, as happened in Post-object
performance art, the interaction of the viewer was encouraged. This invariably
affected the medium of the performance at a global rather than local level.31
This causal ability was a result of a reduction in distance between viewer
and medium that allowed the audience and the medium to unify. As Cyberart
is also liberated from the permanence of the object, is able to operate
globally and contemporaneously with the viewer. By invoking a mosaic of
the viewers' senses, it has become possible to respond and evolve
directly to the interaction of the viewer with the medium. As Cyberart
has the ability to exist as a continuous stream, changing and developing
over time and experienced by individual viewers their own time, it is not
restricted to the moment of its creation. Since Cyberart can be engaged
with globally and simultaneously, it constitutes a form of mass medium
not in terms of the size of its audience, but in accordance with the McLuhan
notion that everyone can become involved with the medium at the same time.32
The consequences
of detaching art from the physical object and transferring it an electronic
medium are considerable. The medium no longer transmits reproductions of
art, but art itself. As the internet now reaches virtually all corners
of the world, the Whitney works can be experienced just as easily in New
Zealand as America.33
While this electronic
speed now permits contemporaneity between medium and body, the enmeshment
of medium and body34
occurs with the transition from mechanisation to the instantaneous and
exact synchronisation of automation. Cyberart advances this to the extent
that the body is brought into conveyance with the multimedia event.35
Prior to the twentieth century, art was mechanised in its structure
- it was a hot medium (if we follow McLuhan) that distanced the viewer
by virtue of its rational formulation of order36
and its accompanying aura. As a result, the viewer was only permitted
a passive involvement with the medium. Automation instead opens up the
senses beyond vision, creating a multifaceted experience in which the
body and the medium are brought into convergence, and the inside and
outside can amalgamate.37
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15
http://www.superbad.com
16 In this, Cyberart is very different
to the media of literature, film, television and perspectival painting.
These are all structured by the linear organisation of symbols, and
as the arrangement of these is determined by the author, the viewer
must engage with the works in this same order. Cubism was important
in that the viewer was able to take a simultaneous experience of the
object, and construct a form of order individual to them.
17 http://www.grammatron.com
18 Smell is one element currently
lacking, but the technology now exists to evoke the nasal experience
of the viewer by activating a mixture of chemicals connected to the
users computer.
19 http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/blindspot
20 This ability for the body to
enmesh with the machine and to develop an alternative, genderless cyber-persona
was illustrated by a recent survey which revealed that over 40% of internet
chatroom users had on occasion masqueraded as the opposite gender.
21 http://www.redsmoke.com
22 A published book is commonly
assumed to be authoritative, researched, credible, and editorially approved
(vanity presses aside), while a spoken opinion is regarded as more subjective.
However the internet allows any unsubstantiated information to adopt
a sense of authority, by assuming a published form.
23 http://ouija.berkeley.edu
24 http://www.fakeshop.com
25 http://www.rtmark.com
26 Subsequent to the involvement
of the artist ceasing, and disregarding natural, non-intentional changes.
27 McLuhan, ibid. pp.89-90.
28 '. . .for the first time in world
history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its
parasitical dependence on ritual.' Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), in Illuminations
(New York, 1969), p.224.
29 ibid., p.220.
30 An example of this local determination
is a changing the television channel. While this allowed the viewer
to determine which information they personally receive, the constituent
medium and information emitted from the origin is not changed.
31 As the medium of this art was
the performance, the involvement of the viewer altered the medium, much
as the computer mediated interaction of the viewer can change the work
of Cyberart. Where a work of art is fixed to an object, e.g. painting,
or a narrative, e.g. literature, any changes the viewer makes is only
at a local level.
32 McLuhan, ibid. p.349.
33 We are no longer reliant on a
second or third-hand dissemination of information to reach us via reviews
of art criticism, and faced with the improbability of actually experiencing
the art in its actual form which results from geographic remoteness
of New Zealand, problems which had caused a perpetuating artistic conservatism
here in earlier years.
34 Instead of a cause and effect
relationship between body and medium, more of a simultaneous relationship
was possible, with the action and the reaction occurring at the same
time.
35 The uniqueness of Cyberart can
be marked by a comparison to other multi-media. For the music video
Californication by the band Red Hot Chilli Peppers, clips of
the band members playing the music merge seamlessly with animated representations
of the group cavorting in a cyber-landscape of an arcade game. The distinction
between the realms is minimal, and the bandmembers controlling the video
game have been subsumed directly into cyberspace. This is similar to
other arcade games such as those of the snowboarding genre, where the
player mounts an actual snowboard, and their physical weaving and jumping
translate directly to the actions of their cyber-personage on screen.
While this conveyance of body and medium is the foundation of Cyberart,
in these examples there is still only a communication between a single,
localised body and the medium. In contrast the global character of Cyberart
permits communication via the medium, to other bodies. By nature of
this interconnectedness, the fusion of man and machine can occur. In
a world first, on May 19, 2000 New Zealand band Shihad released General
Electric Hypergame CD, three interactive tracks which connect the
viewer to a website whereby they can zoom and navigate around within
the music videos to search for clues and questions in order to win prizes.
Like many modern bands, Shihad appreciate the ability of their website
(www.shihad.com) to foster a more
intimate connection between them and their fans, and singer Jon Toogood
claims that this new hyper-entertainment concept will permit an even
greater communication, and he claims that the information-based concept
of the hyper-game incorporates an element of creativity which traditional
video games lack. Rip it Up, June 2000, pp.16-19. As this concept
has the potential capacity to also allow a global and contemporaneous
communication between the artist and their audience, this is evidence
of the expanding potential of Cyberart. Hyper-tainment is defined as
'a fully integrated system of music entertainment, market research and
interactive advertising. It combines hybrid CD music-videos and 3D world
environments with real-time Internet data in a new music-video-game
experience.' www.hypertainment.com
36 As the work of art is provided
with strong structure and a completeness, there is little chance for
the audience to participate by filling in or completing the work. This
is a contrast to the cool medium of Cyberart which demands a considerable
participation from the audience. ibid. pp.22-23.
37 As the speeding up of the electrical
has allowed sequential fragments appear continuous, for example in the
medium of film, the structural basis of the mechanised form has become
disguised. It was Cubism, by encouraging more than a visual experience,
that permitted automation, and included other senses which are less
structured. McLuhan, ibid. p.12.
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