ABSTRACT
I will describe this process of collaboration that philosopher Félix Guattari refers to as a “temporal scaffolding,” an infrastructure or an operator of temporal junctions and attractors (Bourriaud 2002: 96).2 Collaboration and creativity expert Keith Sawyer maintains that this interaction should be collaborative in order for it to be effective. The support is both “adjustable and temporal” (Sawyer 2006: 1). As a metaphor and verb, it will help me describe the agency and temporal relations of artists, academics, art disciplines, software, Internet, smart mobile apps, and audiences that met up at different times to collaborate on the project AffeXity. The project’s evolutionary nature of temporal formations is a good example of a project using a relational aesthetic not only in its outcomes, but also in its stages of development. Furthermore, the AR used in the project extends the notion of relational temporality as it invites an audience to move from place to place, connecting with the project, using networked smartphones and tablets. The project commenced in 2010, when Jay Bolter, Professor of Media and Technology at Georgia Tech, whilst developing the open source AR app, Argon, invited Kozel to experiment with the app in an interdisciplinary digital art project at MEDEA, a Research Lab for Collaborative Media, Design, and Public Engagement at Malmö University. Realizing that AR and Screendance have the potential to capture affect in city spaces, Kozel contacted me to collaborate on the project as a Screendance videographer. My task was to research, digitally capture, direct, choreograph and edit affective movement in the cities of Copenhagen and Malmö. Since then there have been several outcomes using the AR apps Argon and Aurasma: AffeXity Phases 01 & 02, DansAR 01 & 02 and AffeXity Passages & Tunnels. Approximately 15 collaborators have joined the “scaffolding”.3
