An essay written for press pack for Playware exhibition
held at Laboral, Asturias, Spain
http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/gameworld/playware/index_001.html
Dr. Henrik Ehrsson (1), a researcher at University College London’s,
Institute of Neurology, claims to have induced ‘Out Of Body’
experiences in volunteers under laboratory conditions this August, for
the first time. Using head-mounted displays, participants watched real-time
film recorded by two video cameras located behind them. The image from
the left video camera transmitted to the left-eye display and the image
from the right camera to the right-eye display. The stereoscopic image
that the participants saw created the illusion for them of seeing their
own back, displayed from the perspective of someone sitting behind them.
Ehrsson argues that in these experiments, the participants' perception
of self shifts from the first person, to a position outside of the corporeal.
While the study seems not to question notions of individual subjectivity,
it does at least posit alternative spaces within which this might exist.
Artists have for some time, been creating and exploring spaces for intersubjectivity.
Enabled by networked technology and informed by the cultural of gaming,
much of this work seeks active collaborations with its audience.
Debate has been raging online (2) about Ehrsson’s research. There
have been discussions about what the nature of this simulation is, questions
as to whether it replicates or simulates an OBE. There have been further
disputes about whether OBE’s can be classified as, religious, psychological,
physiological, or some other phenomena. The research team themselves have
resurrected the topic of virtual reality and ponder on the implications
of their work for gaming. While science often attempts to explain particular
phenomena by ascribing functions to them, there is a developing artistic
practice, which seeks an affective engagement with its audiences. This
work asks us to consider perceptions of self and to explore social relations.
The OBE experiment as described by Dr. Ehrsson is a perceptual illusion,
induced by external stimuli. Artists are increasingly playing with technology,
using it to create metaphors for social relationships, creating systems
of communication and asking their audiences to make new connections in
new spaces with other users, through human-to-computer and group interaction,
to conceptualise new ideas of agency.
Playware is Laboral’s follow-up exhibition to Gameworld, and is
curated by Gerfried Stocker; Director, Ars Electronica, Lintz, and Carl
Goodman; Deputy Director and Director of Digital Media, Museum of the
Moving Image, New York. The exhibition examines the intersection between
gaming and art and foregrounds a rich seam of creativity that explores
our relationships with one another and questions how these are being transformed
by networked technology and gaming culture. Eight installed artworks that
reference gaming and gaming culture will be exhibited alongside twelve
‘art games’. The exhibition reveals a series of connections
and influences across this increasingly blurred intersection: highly engaging
and accessible to a wide range of audiences, the works seek affective
and kinaesthetic encounters.
Bump, by Assocreation, is one such artwork and consists of two interactive
pavements sited at remote locations and networked together. For Playware
the intention is to use the work to connect Laboral with the nearby city
of Gijon. Pressure created by the footsteps of passers-by on each interactive
pavement is relayed to the alternate site. Pneumatic pistons within the
walkways then produce a disembodied 'bump', this rise in the pavement
mirrors, or recreates in reverse, the pressure of the original footfall.
These physical connections made between disparate locations disrupt the
normal pedestrian flow. As people become aware of another thoroughfare
networked to their own, they are forced to engage with and consider these
remote others. They must either renegotiate their route accordingly or
have their passage dislocated by this intangible interchange.
Freqtric Project by Tetsuaki Baba similarly creates a setting for physical,
‘body-to-body’ communication. Physical contact between users’
skin, the touch of one hand against another, triggers the sound of a drumbeat.
Freqtric Project comes in several versions and among these are Freqtric
Drums and Freqtric Drums Home. Freqtric Drums enables users connected
to the work to become a drum-kit for an individual player. With Freqtric
Drums Home, four users hold a large puck like device in one hand with
their free hand they engage with one another in playground style clapping
games, and in so doing create complex drum patterns. The works require
audience members to overcome their aversions to physical contact with
others, and rewards this newfound physicality, by providing a collaborative
space for public music making.
Toshio Iwai is an artist famous for creating just such spaces; a previous
work Resonance of 4 opened up to public scrutiny the act of social collaboration
within a gallery setting. Resonance of 4 combined the creation and performance
of music in a simple interface, technologically enabled communication
and collaboration being the work’s subject. Electroplankton is a
‘game’ that will be exhibited in Playware the ‘aim’
of which is to create music through the manipulation of tiny sea creatures.
Iwai designed Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS platform. It was released
last year and develops further many of the concepts he first considered
with Resonance of 4. Using a highly visual interface, gamers are able
to create and play self styled musical compositions.
Electroplankton sits clearly within the Playware exhibition at the very
intersection of art and games. Toshio Iwai has designed a game that has
gained a commercial release, but which also questions what gaming is.
Other games exhibited in Playware, such as flOw by thatgamecompanny and
mono by Binary Zoo follow this lead and extend the boundaries of gaming
beyond traditional notions of adversarial competition. Iwai’s work
is an influence on and is referenced by other installed exhibits, works
such as Reactible by Dr. Sergi Jordà and the Interactive Sonic
Systems team at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and Iamascope
by Sidney Fels. Both these works create spaces for the creation of music
through their audiences’ physical engagements, with the works and
with one another.
Metafeild Maze by Bill Keays continues this theme and asks its audience
to take physical control over a room sized, projected version of the traditional
'marble maze' game. The tilt board takes on human dimensions as participants’
movements across the projection tip the virtual game and steer a projected
marble around the board. The interaction is immersive; user, interface
and work joining seamlessly. With these projects, interfaces disappear
as participants engage physically with the works and become integral to
them. Could we describe these experiences as ‘out of body’?
Rather than prompting reactions to optical stimulation, many of the works
in Playware ask that we meet them halfway and respond to their provocations
and engage in a playful exchange. Toshio Iwai is interested in how his
work falls between the virtual and the physical. For him while installations
have physical weight and temperature “sound and light we cannot
touch” (3). Playware is a highly engaging exhibition, often requiring
audience members to use their sense of touch. In so doing, they will affectively
experience an altering of their perceptions of creativity, communication,
and collaboration.
Footnotes
1) http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0708/07082305
Accessed 9th September 2007
2) http://digg.com/general_sciences/Out_of_body_experience_recreated_2
Accessed 9th September 2007
3) As stated by Iwai at the launch of the Tenori-On musical instrument,
4th September 2007 at Phonica Records, London.
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