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.