ABSTRACT
Have you ever imagined what it feels like to experience another body and see the world from their point of view? Looking for ways to connect participants to each other via the artefact/technology became a mission. The imperceptible gap between subjects and objects/technologies, I describe as a third space (the negative space between bodies and the artefact), where there is an invisible union/crossover between them. We may feel the connection but we don’t necessarily see it. The triangulation between two bodies and the technologies led me to question where our perception of self was within this space when we interact with each other, digital counterparts/doubles. I wanted to know if I could suspend the self between the body and the technology through the digital interface. This curiosity led me towards emerging technologies where I utilized the real-time video programme Isadora, in which I could swap live video feeds through HMDs. Consequently In[bodi]mental emerged, and although this was born out of my research, it is difficult to locate whether the theory or the technology led the work. During the making of In[bodi]mental, I began to question the nature of the work. Was it art or research? Was the technology just functioning to make the work, or was it more than that? It was sometime after the completion of In[bodi]mental that I realized the way my working methods had changed as a result of the technology. It was through my development of PULse, which came after In[bodi]mental, that I truly began to understand the grey areas that had begun to emerge as a result of these collaborations between the digital technology and the body. The boundaries were blurring between thinking about ideas, using the tools to realize those ideas and the artefact. In both works, the materialization of these ideas became a hybrid between art and research – hence becoming more a process than a product. The artefact is no longer a product, but a process presented as a product. The ‘live’ element of the work is what made it a living representation of the moment. In In[bodi]mental it was through the real-time video of each other’s digital counterpart caught in real time that kept this process in the ‘here and now’ which was also experienced in PULse where the ‘live’ heart rate of the participant brought the work to life. As a video performance artist of the analogue age, technology had always been the tool – the instrument to realize an artwork. The move from analogue to digital technology was a gradual progression where eventually it became synonymous with my ideas. It was not until my explorations with real-time video and its capabilities, that I fully understood the way these technologies were changing the way I worked – particularly when I was developing PULse; a series of corporeal/digital bodyworks that came after In[bodi]mental. I wanted to create a deeper overlap between bodies and technology that responded to both the visual of video and the physiological body. I came across a heart rate sensor, and began using it in
a similar way to the HMDs in In[bodi]mental, crossing over the threshold of the body, not just through vision, but the hidden world of experience. I created a series of works in which the participant wore a wireless biosensor attached to their finger or ear. The sensor was programmed to work with an Arduino and Isadora, enabling video images and real-time heart rates to be manipulated by performers. Therefore, through the real-time software Isadora and the Arduino live heart beats were captured in realtime. The performer wore the Arduino around their waist as a waist bag. The performative element of the work allowed the participant to use their body like a video player. Through their body they could control certain qualities of the video such as speed, etc. In one work, participants could control the amount of water being poured into a glass via their resting heart rate, BPM beats per minute. If their BPM was 70 plus, then the video would speed up and the water would overflow, if their BPM was less than 70 the speed would slow down to stop. These works have created a biofeedback system locking the participant within the cycle between cause and effect. These works have been presented at the G+VERL Lab in London, 2014, and the Live Interface Conference in Lisbon, 2014, and also as part of an art residency in Umbria Italy, 2014 and can be viewed at the following link: https://lornam77.wix.com/lornamooreartist#!blog/c1cd0. Through the creative/academic development of PULse and In[bodi] mental the following questions emerged. Was the technology leading me or was I leading the technology? Was the technology causing these works, or was it more a collaborative process between body and technology? The compartmentalization between the art and the tool became much more blurred through the act of making. Where was meaning within this triangulation? Was the meaning in the content of the work, or was meaning becoming more inherently tied up within the technology – a marriage between the technology and the image? Both works were highlighting the collaborative process between the technology, the video image and myself, causing a shift in the position of the corporeal body, digital technology, art and research disrupting functionality and meaning. The tools were both functional and inherent to the work. The corporeality of the body was being stretched across and into the work, creating a cause and effect keeping the work in a state of process, while the interaction with the technology was contributing to meaning. It was becoming apparent to me that my method as an artist was changing. Traditionally, I had always worked from the following model: the concept/idea + the tools to make it = the product. Due to the nature of the technologies I was working with in both In[bodi]mental (using realtime video processing) and PULse (bio-sensing technologies) I began to work in a more open ended and non-linear improvised manner. As a maker using these technologies, I began questioning the position of my self during these creative processes. Was I outside the technology? Was I divorced from the artwork or the artefact when it was completed? Was the work finished? What was key for me, was the way that interaction
was becoming the catalyst to really phenomenologically engage in what I was making – to go beyond the canvas, to step through it, and look outside from within the constraints of the picture frame – to observe myself looking, and to place myself in both positions between the corporeality of self and the digital other. If I as the maker can experience these shifts from and between the subject/object dichotomies then perhaps I could provide the same experience to those who participate in my work. I realized I had been working from a traditional viewpoint where the artefact is the materialization of a thought. This all made perfect sense when I came across Tim Ingold’s lecture on ‘Thinking through Making’ (2012) at the Institute for Northern Culture at the University of Lapland. Ingold reverses the tradition of ‘making through thinking’ articulated as a hylomorphic model – an Aristotelian philosophical theory that conceives being as a compound of matter, meaning (hylo) and form (morphic). Ingold claims this traditional viewpoint has no room for growth and creativity wherein ‘we cut knowing off from the immediacy of our own visceral sensory engagement with the world of our everyday life’ (Ingold, 2012). According to Ingold, if we turn this position around ‘thinking through making’ then there is room for creativity. In other words, when we think through making it uses real-time improvisation in which creativity can grow rather than in the novelty of innovation. Ingold’s model is understood as a creative process where nothing is finished, and creativity is brought forward to join in the movement of making and thinking. Here the creation of the artefact is understood as a knot – a binding of materials and histories which make it between materials and environments – it is here that the maker joins his/her life to the process. Ingold uses the metaphor of the line (having no beginning or end) to illustrate the making process; as a meshwork where every line has a loose end that we can follow and take further. So to think through making is to take part and participate in the weave of the meshwork, allowing real time improvisation to take creativity further and enabling the maker to become caught between thinking and making: to see both from a distance and close up. Ingold’s model of making informed my approach to working with these technologies. The technology alone did not allow me to project my idea onto the material which comes into being. Instead, it was through interaction, exploration and collaboration between the body and the digital enmeshed in each other that brought about new lines of enquiry taking me on a journey of discovery gaining knowledge from within and expanding creative growth. There was no beginning or end, but a loop between these interactive threads collapsing the space between the maker and the artefact, artwork and participant – always in a state of process and humanmachine interaction. I call my work ‘process art’, where meaning comes from interaction and participation creates context. The move from analogue to digital impacted on how I work, and what the work has become – a hybrid of art/research bodies and technology. Moreover, as the facilitator/maker of these works and the interactions of the participants,
together we breathe new life into them, bringing the artwork alive and creating a composite self of body and technology.
