bc523s2019 - Tumblr blog

bc523s2019 · 6 years ago

Text

Digital Intimacy

What separates a conversation from someone right next to you from communication over long distances? The same information could be relayed in both methods, though much more could be gathered from a closer interaction. A greeting can feel much more wholesome if you can see the person you're talking to as opposed to talking over the phone. You won't necessarily see mannerisms, vocal tones, let alone an emotion through a text message or a post on social media. In this exhibition, the works displayed involve a recreation or lack of an intimate atmosphere experienced when in person with others.

In a collaborative project titled Killbox (2015), viewers are able to participate in an interactive virtual simulation where they can either play as a drone bomber or a civilian unaware of his or her impending demise. Inspired by countless American drone strikes in Northern Pakistan since 2004, Killbox plays on the significance of being in person versus over a screen or a simulation. As drone strikes are carried out from control stations where they are launched from the press of a button, the people responsible for collateral damage remain emotionally distant from the many lives they impact, or even end. On the other hand, people on the receiving end of these automated attacks are killed en masse without being able to look their killer in the eye. In Killbox, players are given a sense of this lack of connection between killer and victim where they are playing a video game, and these soon to be victims are represented as bouncing balls, giving the experience the feel of a child's playroom. Taking the life of another is significant to say the least, although this disconnect could change the feeling considerably. Would it be easier to kill someone miles away with just a flick of a switch as opposed to looking them in the eye, with a weapon in hand?

Have you ever considered a video chat instead of a conversation over the phone? Is it because seeing someone else's face when you converse matters that much? How about a meeting in person to express your thoughts and ideas more clearly that can't be captured over the internet? In besides (2015), Annie Abrahams and Martina Ruhsam held a series of webcam- performances that touch upon these ideas by creating a virtual space that mimics in-person connections. Their second performance, moved by some thing, had the two of them participate in a lengthy heartfelt exchange talking about personal matters involving the deaths of loved ones. Overlaying the audio is a repeating session of the two choreographing each others'; movements over a webcam. It is already difficult enough to open to others about personal experiences, and even more so to do it in person. Through this performance, Abrahams and Ruhsam recreate the closeness felt from a person to person exchange through digital communication.

Artist duo OMTA have expressed how unpredictable love and relationships start out through their online project Making Love: Poetry in Motion (2015). Here they have created a program that randomly generates lines of text forming into a poem drawing from several recent tweets posted online. These poems express feelings of love toward the viewer, although the fact that these are created and sent digitally does not make it relate to physical and social disconnection between people. Rather it is the sender, or in this case "senders" that demonstrate that. It is one thing to receive a letter of love from a single person, but to see one made from multiple people randomly compiled into one group of text is a different matter altogether. Would you still get the same feeling if you did not have the knowledge of how these poems were created? What if you were told these were from someone you had feelings for? Or from a complete stranger whom you have no idea who they are? Would you still feel a connection to this unknown sender if you could meet them face to face?

In Condition:Used (2014), Anna Pinkas creates miniature household stages out of paper cutouts that recreate indoor appearances found on online furniture and housing services. Here, the intimacy felt digitally takes a turn from other individuals and extends to inanimate objects and environments. Pinkas makes these crafted worlds feel believable and viewers can mentally insert themselves into these spaces as if they were a child playing with dolls.

Virtual tourism has been experienced in several media, most prominently in film, television, and video games. From the exotic wilds of Madagascar in Madagascar to the icy mountaintops of Kitezh in Tomb Raider to the barren Arabian desert in Uncharted, virtual tourism connects people to locations they've never seen through capturing and immersing them in these environments. In artist group Lily & Honglei's Shadow Play: Tales of Urbanization of China (2014), viewers are brought into the history of how China transitioned itself from a land- based society into an urban one through a digital simulation. Through virtual, augmented, and physical reality interfaces, participants are shown and immersed in not only distant locations, but through time as well.

0 notes