IN MOTION

I looked at the boy; he was looking at me as if we had already agreed on something. Just by standing beside him for a minute too long, I had somehow propositioned him. I couldn’t leave him without some kind of negotiation.
You could wash my car.
For how much?
Ten dollars.
For ten dollars I won’t do anything.
Okay.
I opened my purse and gave him ten dollars and he walked down Effie Street toward certain death and I walked home. In the reoccurring dream, everything has already falled down, and I’m underneath. I’m crawling, sometimes for days, under the rubble. And as I crawl, I realize that this one was the Big One. It was the earthquake that shook the whole world, and every single thing was destroyed. But this isn’t the scary part. That part always comes right before I wake up. I am crawling, and then suddenly, I remember: the earthquake happened years ago. This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is just how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for anything else.

- No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

I walked down the hall and saw that Theresa was sitting on the floor next to a chair. This is always a bad sign. It’s a slippery slope, and it’s best to just sit in chairs, to eat when hungry, to sleep and rise and work. But we have all been there. Chairs are for people, and you’re not sure if you are one. I knelt beside her. I rubbed her back, and then I stopped because I thought it might be too familiar, but that felt cold, so I patted her shoulder, which meant I was only touching her one third of the time. The other two thirds, my hand was either traveling toward her or away from her. The longer I patted, the harder it became; I was too aware of the intervals between the pats and couldn’t find a natural rhythm. I felt like I was hitting a congo drum, and then as soon as I thought of this, I had to beat out a little cha-cha-cha, and then Theresa began to cry. I stopped with the patting and hugged her, and she hugged me back. I had made everything just horrible enough to bring Theresa’s sadness down to the next level, and I joined her there. It was a place of overflowing collaborative misery, and we cried together.

- No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

Currently my interest revolves around finding ways we can destabilize our constructions of our self-identity. Which qualities and ideas about ourselves do we rely on as the basis for our daily actions and decisions and future planning? How does the definition of our self concept help us and how does it limit us/cause anxiety or other problems? What happens when elements of our self construct are changed, manipulated, eliminated?

What is the relationship between how we think about our own identities, how others think about us, and the systems of interactions and expectations we have created and operate within? Can we exploit, stretch, subtly rearrange these systems as a way of revealing places where needless rigidity in our own self concepts prevents greater freedom and well-being? Essentially I’m interested in finding processes of bootstrapping or subverting our lives and self-identities to discover a much more expansive and free experience as ourselves.

At this moment in time, there is an opportunity to use technology to create some interesting manipulations that were not previously possible. Our pervasive and instantaneous access to each other, to information, and to representations of our own data sets up something of an infinitely reflecting set of distorted mirrors. The accuracy and accessibility of feedback technologies allows for new forms of experimentation and rapid iteration. New forums for connection and communication both reinforce and exaggerate existing expectations while offering potential for developing new systems of relating to each other.

I see this work existing in a space between art, design, technology, and self/life experimentation. Rather than going in with a specific positioning or point of view to express (as in the case of ‘critical design’ for example), projects would be more like experiments. The hypothesis being that technologically introducing manipulations into our daily life could potentially unlock previously unexperienced perspectives of our selves. While many of these may fail, they could point to directions for further investigation.

As my questions involve people, I am interested in situations where I can work with others – whether as collaborators, students, teachers, co-performers, fellow test subjects. By experimenting on our selves, we give up the comfortable boundary between work/theorizing and life/experiencing and maybe create possibilities for more unexpected discoveries.

I’ve spent the summer working with Sosolimited creating interactives for the IBM100 THINK exhibit. It is open sep 23 – oct 23 at the Lincoln Center in NYC, admission is free! Now I’m off to elsewhere for the rest of the month, more on that to come…

“FILE São Paulo 2011 takes place from July 19 to August 21, 2011 at the FIESP Cultural Center – Ruth Cardoso. In the program, immersive and interactive installations, tablets, animations, games, machinimas, besides works of web art, video, documentaries, music clips and sound experiments.”

Come try out Conversacube in English and Portuguese!

http://filefestival.org

This association to the idea that robots might “double” for family members brings to mind a story I heard when I first visited Japan in the early 1990s. The problems of the elderly loomed large. Unlike in previous generations, children were mobile, and women were in the workforce. Aging and infirm parents were unlikely to live at home. Visiting them was harder; they were often in different cities from their children. In response, some Japanese children were hiring actors to substitute for them and visit aging parents. The actors would visit and play their parts. Some of the elderly parents had dementia and might not have known the difference. Most fascinating were reports about the parents who knew that they were being visited by actors. They took the actors’ visits as a sign of respect, enjoyed the company, and played the game. When I expressed surprise at how satisfying this seemed for all concerned, I was told that in Japan being elderly is a role, just as being a child is a role. Parental visits are, in large part, the acting out of scripts. The Japanese valued the predictable visits and well-trained and courteous actors.

Sherry Turkle, Alone Together

Co-curated with Megan May Daalder.

Featuring performance works by: Katie Ammons, David Leonard, Christopher Richmond, Gustavo Cordova, Johanna Reed, Megan May Daalder, Adam Overton, Alison D’amato, Emily Beattie, Kristin Lucas, Tiffany Sum, Alex Shilling, Gabbie Bautista, Priscialla Brinshot, Gustavo Cordova, Dongyi Wu.

How would people appear if you were transported to a near future time where all machines were invisible? Or to a distant past where, suddenly stripped all gadgetry, you were left only with muscle memory and oral history? How do aging systems respond to the transposition of more recent technological metaphors and customs onto non-technological environments?

By using the body as the primary point of reference, the works in this show reveal adaptive or misplaced behaviors that would ordinarily be mediated by machines.

neoanalogue.tumblr.com

Impractically, Practical showcases artists and designers that use business as a cultural instigator, raising questions about the potential of transmedia communication to act as a catalyst to influence and initiate change on both global and local levels, through fictional entrepreneurship, and diegetic business.

Thursday, June 9 at 6:00pm – July 14 at 10:00pm
860 S. Broadway @ 9th Los Angeles, CA 90014

Featuring work by:
Zach Blas
David Elliot
Michael Kontopoulos
David Leonard
Matthew Manos
Lauren McCarthy
Sara Moore
Ana Ramos
Jackson Wang
The Yes Men
and more special guests…

Opening night in conjunction with the LA Art Walk – enjoy a bunch of galleries and stop by Take My Picture gallery at broadway & 9th from 6pm – 10pm. There is a parking lot right across the street, parallel.

curated by Matthew Manos
exhibition design by Kate Slovin

http://mattmanos.com/ImpracticallyPractical

Inneract is an iPhone app that creates a new layer augmenting normal social space. It allows you to determine your own desired interactions outside the bounds of what is normally acceptable and make them known through a layer that only other users can see. Choose any interaction you would like to have, and post it with your picture. Other users nearby will see your invitation and can choose to engage with you. Or, explore the whims of others and participate! Check it out at inneract.us!

We are having a final show for the class I have been co-teaching this quarter with Emily Beattie. We’ve had the privilege of working with an amazing group of undergrads from Design | Media Arts, World Arts and Culture, and Theater Film and Television. Come out and see some of the stuff they’ve come up with!

Monday 3/7 6-8pm
UCLA Broad Art Center
EDA (Room 1250)

Presentation of works by students in Performance and Technology Lab, featuring performances by:

Gabbie Bautista
Hunter Bird
Priscilla Brinshot
Cindy Chi
Wesley Chou
Gustavo Cordova
Matt Miller
Mimi Tang
Dongyi Wu
Shoji Yamasaki

via jeff via danielle via toothpastefordinner.com

I am pleased to announce that Tools for Improved Social Interacting has been chosen as a Jury Recommended Work in the Japan Media Arts Festival. The piece will be exhibited in some form February 2-13 at the National Art Center, Tokyo.

I’m very excited to be co-teaching a class with the lovely Emily Beattie next quarter on the topic of performance and technology. This course is an interdisciplinary experiment, with students coming from the Design | Media Arts, Theater, Film, and Television, Art, and World Arts and Culture departments. It will embody a workshop or laboratory format, where we will investigate the approaches of practitioners situated at the intersection of performance and technology through readings, screenings, physical experiments, and discussions. The course will be structured around a series of performed studies, intended to allow students to expand their own understanding of what constitutes performance and technology.

My work focuses on the systems and structures of social interaction and the influences of technology, dealing with themes of performance and representation, identity and relationships, control and feedback. I am interested in the slightly uncomfortable moments when patterns are shifted, expectations are broken, and participants become aware of the system.

I begin with my own feelings of anxiety and inadequacy when dealing with interpersonal relations. On one hand, the social expectations governing behavior and interaction are so clear to me. Smile, greet, inquire about the other’s well being, nod and listen sympathetically, respond… The structures and routines are necessary to keep society running and provide us with a context within which to situate our feelings and actions.

However, what limits come with these familiar interactions? How often do we find ourselves performing the script of our lives rather than actually living it, embracing the unknown and unplanned? Are there possibilities for more meaningful, more intimate, less superficial exchanges?

Rejecting the system as a whole may be impractical and impossible, but what options exist within it? My work strives to use technology to find the loopholes, open up spaces of experimentation and improvisation, subvert the existing norms of social interaction. Perhaps in this everyone can find a place that fits them best, an understanding of the edges of expected behavior, and an awareness and hope of possibilities beyond them.

I work primarily in everyday life, attempting to blend reality, fiction, performance, art, and humor. I start with common social situations – a gym workout, a conversation, a first introduction – and introduce variations into the normal routine. These may take the form of site specific video installations, everyday performances, electronic devices for altering interactions, viral internet videos, websites, and mobile apps.

My process is very iterative, with each project inspiring and informing the next. Participation of others is always critical – each piece is an open work that is completed, extended, and changed by the actions and experiences of participants. I make things that can be injected directly into everyday life, so that participants interpret and integrate them in that context, rather than in the vacuum of a gallery space.

Conversacube will be featured in the WIRED Store over the holidays.

The WIRED Store is not just a shopping destination – it’s an interactive experience that allows you to touch, test and tinker with the most “wired” products out there for the digital gentleman, gadget girl, gastronaut, smarter upstarter, adventure capitalist, maker, or culturazzo in your life. Stop by to shop and share what you find with friends and family.

November 18 – December 26, 2010

WIRED Store
692 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

http://www.wiredstore.net