Lynn Hershman-Hyperessay

I know Lynn Hershman was discussed in my class last semester, but I don't think we looked at her work this semester and I feel like she is the only media artist I know of that has done work related to what I hope to achieve. I don't want to discuss filmmakers or writers, because that is not going to help me move forward with my ideas the way that I need to. I already know how to edit together a story, but I can use Lynn Hershman's ideas to help me really think about how I can enhance the narrative into different branches to involve the audience.


Lynn Hershman is actually one of the pioneers in multimedia, thinking of some very unique ways to use interactivity in the 1980s.


Let me start with Roberta, the fictionalized character with a real life. She was basically an alternative personality. Her records were kept with photographs, papers, and other tangible items. This piece is a good way to think about making something fictional seem real. My project was not going to use a physical human in the flesh or real objects. But by creating fake papers and altered photographs digitally, I could begin to build an alternate persona for the character in their fictional path. Roberta shows me that the more invested I am in the alternate story, the more I can emphasize the importance of decisions. By thinking out even the most minute aspects of someones life, such as the type of clothes they would wear in each story, could help me build an almost too believable alternate life. You can't just have the story, but the proof to back it up.

Lorna best represents what I am trying to achieve with branching narratives. Each object in Lorna's room was a new start to a story. The viewer picked an object by pressing a number on a remote control and followed many branches to result in three possible endings.


For the whole semester I only thought in two branches: real and fictional. But that leaves only one decision up to the participant, and if I want a fully interactive piece, the viewer should constantly be a part of the flow of the storyline. It is useful to see how video can portray the narrative, even a false one. (Though I couldn't actually see it, because no videos of it would work on my computer.)

I think I got so caught up in trying to figure out what visual medium to use I stopped thinking about how to enhance the viewer experience. When I continue with this piece I hope to try and produce many branches like Hershman does, with more than one fictional ending. I think when the participant is repeatedly asked to make a decision it will draw their attention in more and keep them invested in the story. That will make it truly interactive, rather than just a menu with a button.

The last piece I think might be useful is her Electronic Diaries. These are all truthful accounts of her depression, eating disorder, and more. I like this one, because even though it is not interactive, it is very human. It is someone talking out her problems, and her friends and family discussing their viewpoint, and through all of this talking they are coming up with some real connections and conclusions. That is the one thing that is lacking in my narrative: the WHY? It could be interesting to bring World War I or The Great Depression into my grandparents story, because these are events that affected many of the decisions that led up to the moment where they meet.

I cannot decide at the moment if additional information would detract from or add to the overall work. I cannot necessarily combine all of Lynn Hershman's ideas into one piece, because too many facets could ruin an interesting story with human interaction. I am grateful to her though for using her personal life to create fictional people and stories, because it has allowed me to see a successful way of presenting such a narrative.

Using her tools for fictional, multiple-branched stories, and Krueger's idea of a responsive environment, I can hopefully continue to brainstorm and build upon my ideas to finally "get it." I feel like this semester I have not been as ecstatic about this project as some of my previous multimedia pieces because I was somewhat lost. I only wish I had realized the importance of utilizing other multimedia artist's ideas to expand upon my own.

What is my influence?

At this moment I do not know who to write about for my hyperessay. I could just go on YouTube, type in media art, and see what pops up, but I'm looking for something more specific.

It is difficult for me because I didn't have an artist as an influence while working on my project.
I was influenced by the mere strength and humanity of the stories I read about in Listening is An Act of Love by Dave Isay and from seeing my first digital stories. To me, there is normally no need to make things complicated, because a simple story made only of words can be so powerful.
But I wanted to let the audience play a role and be invested in the story as if it was their own. I wanted them to have to make a difficult decision just like they would in their own lives. And that became the point of my project in the beginning.

I wish I had known about responsive environments from the start. I would not necessarily have been able to achieve something like that, but it would have helped me to figure out what was really important to me in my project: which is 1) the story but 2) the way the participant is involved in the recreating of the story.

Kreuger's Responsive Environments

Wow.
After the first page, I already had millions of teeny ideas running through my head.

The point of a responsive environment is that the participant is making decisions and the computer is basing its responses off the participant's actions. But the computer also has an input on what the participant does when it changes the response, causing the participant to think and try something new. It's really cool because it is the most complete form of interactivity I have learned about this semester, it really is like symbiotic relationship where one can't do something without the other.

My project was going to be something like that where the participant chooses a path and depending on what happens next they might want to do something else with the story. But the difference is that my piece would not have computer programming creating a new response, I would be choosing the response. Though this tool (computer programming) could be useful to create a very malleable, realistic narrative.

The idea of GLOWFLOW was really cool and could be helpful in trying to convey that people wander around in life not knowing that they are altering things and creating a new reality with each action. If applied to my work, a person could move through a space and projections and audio would change depending on where they go, creating the storyline based on their movement. If they didn't know why things were unfolding the way they were because of them it would be interesting to parallel how some things happen in life and you don't know why. This article really shows me how interested I am in duplicating human experience and emotion in my work in a way where it is obvious because it is out of context of every day living.

But Myron Krueger is right when he says that participants should be aware of how the environment is responding. The piece would not be as strong because part of the point is that they can work with the computer and the environment to change the artwork and have a new thought process based on the response.

Reading about METAPLAY just made me smile because it is innocent and childlike in a way where adults discover the simplest thingg. It shows how easy it is for people to connect with each other from the simplest of tools if the execution is done right. I like that it's almost more about human interaction than computer/human interaction. The computer is just a tool.

Interaction as an actual medium actually makes sense to me and I never thought I would get out of the idea that a medium needs to be tangible. I love that using responsive environments can possibly use art to improve intelligence and form human bonds. I think using interaction as a main focus rather than the program used to create the visuals or what color to make something can help make a piece so much stronger in a contextual sense. I look forward to using this idea in the future. It's really kind of exciting.

Roy Ascott's "Is There Love In the Telematic Embrace?"

When I mentioned this piece in my blog from freshman year, all I really got from it was the fact that multimedia is not an extension of traditional forms of art, but its own new collection of tools. I had decided that media pieces make the content more obvious than a painting or drawing.

That's it.

Reading this article again is very helpful when thinking about my project from this semester. I now see that content in telematic pieces can be even more complicated than in traditional art, because it is constantly changing due to either the participant or the whims of the data based on the participants actions.

I like the idea of the artist being the facilitator. The artist (me) performs interviews and collects information. But the interviewee is also an artist in the sense that they can create the fictional story on their own and also tell me the truth the way that they see it. That person is a participant in my work, but then there is the third party who participates in the actual piece...watching and listening to the story of stranger, organized by me, and having the ability to choose different endings and branches of the narrative.

I like this better than doing something like Jodi.org for my specific project. In Jodi, the participant clicks what they want to, but they don't know what they are going to get. In my piece they don't know what exactly will happen, but they make a conscious decision based on the information given to them from Part I of the stories.

The idea of using telematics is an interesting one to me, just like Char Davies virtual reality spawned new ideas in my head.
My work could turn into a website instead of a DVD. People could add their own stories, and add fictional parts to other people's stories, further complicating the content of the piece.

There could even be a "random" section where data information systems produce a newly mixed narrative each time. Even though the data is immaterial, like Ascott says, you can use it to change the content and medium based on participation or lack thereof. While having the data make its own random decisions could be interesting in terms of new storyline, artificial intelligence is something I don't think I'd want to ever use in my work. Maybe I have watched too much Terminator, but it scares me to have computers and data make decisions. I think humanity and interaction between humans USING technology is key, but only as a tool.

Char Davies: how the physical can trigger the emotional with technology

Char Davies' article gave me some great ideas for ways to expand my project if I ever had the skills or the tools or the budget.

She says that virtual reality is a place where "our minds may float among three-dimensionally extended yet virtual forms in a paradoxical combination of the ephemerally immaterial with what is perceived and bodily felt to be real."

With my project focusing on memories, decisions, and fictional stories, I picture the way people make connections in their brain. I kind of see it as an "osmose", not of worlds, but of snapshots and home movies in your mind. It's kind of like what Davies says, how it seems to be so real when you think deeply about it, but the memory isn't real and can change every time you think back to it.

If I could make a virtual reality version of my project the viewer would slowly move through white fog uncovering black and white pieces of a past. After a certain amount of time there would be two paths and the body would lean one way or another to choose a direction, showing that it's not all about how you think and compare options, but sometimes just a physical gut feeling. At that point there would be less fog and photos/videos would appear quicker in a more forced way and some color would begin to appear, showing that the specific path you chose is taking it's form in reality and you can't go back. Man, if only I had the equipment.

It is such an awesome thing to think about, because it is not just interactive, but immersive. In our pieces the audience is engaged in the art, but with Osmose the audience is IN the piece.


I like her idea of "dehabituating of perception" and that someone will be receptive to new things rather than defensive. I think that works because of her emphasis that virtual reality needs to have an environment different in some way from our real one. It would be interesting to see if the same effect of tranquility and loss of inhibition from Osmose came over people if the simulation was an exact copy of a a busy city avenue, or if it had to be that same street but without people, or without color, or some other alteration of reality.

Something else I thought about was that if this experience based on the physical movement of the body alters the mental and emotional, can something where the mind leads the experience then make the body act in a certain way?


This video is also interesting because it shows how far you can go with the technology. If you were literally walking and ducking through a virtual space (rather than just leaning like in Davies' piece), imagine how much more you may or may not explore and your piece could be come so much more personal and immersive for the viewer.

Recombinant Theater and Digital Resistance

This article discusses that digital is taking over analog completely in information and communications technology, and beginning to in other fields. Practically, people want the digital (replication). But part of them still wants to have options (analog). It's interesting to think of objects like clothing in this way, because usually these terms are tied to technology. Analog (unique options) are considered high fashion, because they are so different and rare, whereas digitally replicated options are convenient but not special.
To apply this idea to art would be like a painting where there is only one copy, versus a piece that is copied and reproduced for mass production. I feel like even though Duchamp took a mass produced object, that still did not make his art digital. The object was digital before he took it out of it's normal location, but by putting it somewhere unique and attempting to give it a new meaning I believe he actually brought it back to analog.

Recombinant theater (according to Critical Art Ensemble) is where there is a performance in a public space and people can come in and out and they all add to it in a way. It is and it is not analogic. It is not because there is not just one person (i.e. director) speaking for society. It is analogic because each performance will never be replicated exactly again.

Thinking about analog and digital in the current art world would be helpful to create works that entice people because they are unique, but still similar enough to other pieces. It can promote interactivity with the audience and any other method that will make it unable to be replicated, if that is what the artist wants. With digital technology as a medium, an analog concept would juxtapose nicely.

Dick Higgins Intermedia: What the heck is he talking about?

Dick Higgins

The first thing to pop up in my head was a great, big "WHAT?!" when I read "We are approaching the dawn of a classless society, to which separation into rigid categories is absolutely irrelevant."
Sure, it is very interesting and true and worth thinking about that art and society can go hand in hand. And it is also true that in the days of the extreme class system, art was extremely categorized. Now it is not so much. But to say that society is also going to be classless is just false. If he had said that society is making it easier to cross class lines, while many certain classes are still rigidly stuck where they are, that would be more true of society and of art. Because while art is taking so many new forms (based on medium and/or concept), there are still paintings that are just paintings and people still have affection for the "original" types of art.


But getting to the point of the article: INTERMEDIA.
The way Higgins describes intermedia, it is basically a concept with the mediums forming around it. It is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary method to combine different subjects and see how they interact to result in a certain effect. Intermedia is constantly changing until the mediums match up to convey a conceptual idea. I think that Higgins' explanation makes a lot of sense and does a nice job of showing the difference between mixed media and intermedia, which I did not know before.
I do disagree that found objects are intermedia though. He believes this just because they don't conform to a pure medium. But even if the artist has a concept to go along with the object, I believe something more has to be done with it to make it intermedia and to strengthen the idea.

"A Season in Hell": How does the story illuminate our understanding of political and social conditions during times of crisis?

"A Season in Hell" works differently than other political/social works on the subject because often they depict the people affected. You'll see photographs of people jumping out of the World Trade Center, or a Katrina victim on a roof. This is an effective tool where the viewer feels an emotional response and a connection to the people that suffered.

Instead, this work chose to show the people responsible for the suffering. Instead of feeling bad for U.S. citizens, it provokes anger at the administration. It's important to see both. Feeling bad doesn't always change things, but anger can. Basically, this piece showed such an extreme opinion of the current government that even if you do not believe it...it will make you think about it as the cause for the so-called demise of the country.

What is the difference between noise and sound?

I suppose it depends who you ask. Luigi Russolo seems to think sound is made from natural entities and noise comes from man-made machines. Sound is any vibration that a living species can hear, whereas noise is usually a loud and disturbing sound. I think Russolo's comparison of the two does not really make sense considering noise is a sound also, and nature creates many odd noises, but I understand what he was trying to say. It doesn't quite matter how you define these terms as long as you utilize what the ear hears in a compelling manner.

Noise as art is completely reasonable. An artist is supposed to use their creativity and apply it to a medium. By changing the volume of one noise and increasing delay on another, someone is making an executive decision to alter a medium and create a new piece. Sound goes the same way. If sound is comprised of vibrations, by altering the vibrations to an aesthetically pleasing new sound (or unpleasing depending on the artist's goal), one is starting a new work of art. It doesn't matter what you call sounds and what you call noise, but if you combine and change them in the right way the result can offer a different emotional response to the viewer than a traditional medium. Sometimes if it is combined with a visual aspect as well, the message could be stronger, but I think there is something to be said for closing your eyes and imagining a picture or place based on sound alone.

How do the movies in the exhibit differ from the media they question and satire?

Anne Ellegood's article, "Character Driven: Subjectivity and the Cinematic", uses different examples to show how reality and fiction can be blurred in cinema. It asks the audience to consider how much of real life is portrayed in the movies. Ellegood quotes Director Jean-Luc Godard who says that cinema is life, there is no difference (Ellegood 114). I think that in cinema, as long as you know that it is not real, you will not be deceived. Suspension of disbelief occurs, but once the movie is over, you come back to reality and can question what you just witnessed. Even in reality television and documentaries, it is widely known not to believe everything you see.

Many of the works on exhibition at the Hirshhorn use video and film to portray how we are tricked by the media. But if you look at at these pieces, how can you just believe what they are depicting, even if they are exposing at least one truth about society? Doing that would be the same as ignoring the message are they are trying to convey. It all becomes extremely complicated and convinces me that Godard is wrong and that cinema is always slightly off from the way things really work in life.




Kerry Tribe's piece Double is what really shows me that no matter how well you imitate something, it still can't be real. Five different actresses who look like the artist were hired to portray a video artist, and interpret this role using information they learned about Tribe. You cannot call these interpretations untrue, but they are definitely unreal. Even though they depict real scenes and use real background information, they cannot and will not ever be able to capture the true spirit of Kerry Tribe. Simple actors will never emit the passion of the individual herself. Yet, even if Tribe was acting as herself, could the audience believe everything is true? This piece helps to consider some of Ellewood's main questions: can virtual realism act as pure realism for an audience that will never know for sure? and what exactly is "truth" when put in the context of cinema?
I am convinced that you can not even trust that which you see with your own eyes. So nothing is real, yet everything is real. Tribe's work and Ellewood's article help to break that idea down and let the viewer perceive reality for themselves.

Mother + Father: How can forcing stereotypical gender roles on an audience be a good thing?

Most people don't want to see the truth about themselves. Especially if what is supposedly true for every man or woman, is not necessarily real for them.
Candice Brietz's Mother + Father depicts famous actors and actresses...well, acting. They play the "typical" men and women. Yet through these fictional characters, there is always a bit of truth. The mothers seem extra emotional and prone to admitting they were wrong. The fathers act as the provider and stress education and discipline. Though the original context in each movie may have been to show the differences in parenting between mother and father, this piece seemed to make it easier to pick out the parallels.
Both genders are part of the larger humanity and want people to care about them, but ultimately want what is best for the child. Both are selfish and compassionate, reserved and angry. By utilizing comparisons of extreme gender stereotypes, Mother + Father isolates the raw emotion of woman and man and helps the opposite sex to understand and relate to the other.

I Have No Clue

I don't know what message I will try to convey or what subject will be used, but I'm hoping to use new forms of media for this project. I did so much with video and sound editing last semester that I would like to add a new aspect. I know very little about motion graphics and web-site making programs. I want to do something more creative than just video and sound arranged in a new way, though those two mediums will probably be included. I think it would be really awesome to make a website or DVD utilizing buttons and moving pictures (not in the video sense, but more of a cartoonish way). Websites are usually used to gain information, but I think it would be cool to make one that just serves the purpose of displaying art. Instead of a painting hung in a gallery it would be animations displayed in cyberspace. I don't know if any of this is possible to learn well enough in the semester to make a huge project, but we'll see.