This is the lab where everything started to come together for me. It was essentially a review of things we’ve been doing so far—making circuits and directing electricity through different components—but with the additional feedback provided by a multimeter. With voltage and amperage readings, the behavior of electrical current through LEDs, resistors, and a potentiometer becomes much clearer. I also discovered that my 12-volt DC power adapter actually registers 17 volts of power. Will that overwhelm a 7805 voltage regulator?
One aspect of physical computing that particularly interests me is the ability to detect and process environmental conditions. Here is my first (successful!) attempt at using a light sensor, or photo cell. The LED’s brightness fades in inverse proportion to the amount of light the photo cell detects. For our upcoming “Stupid Pet Trick” assignment, I’d like to use an analog sensor, like the photo cell, to provide some complementary audio/visual feedback to the environment. For example, it would be interesting to program a range of colors to appear in accordance with room temperature, or to generate sounds based on the intensity of light.
Often, when asked about my graduate education, I try to describe ITP as an art school program focused on new media technologies. This shorthand is useful but always raises more questions about the nature of the curriculum. “Like PowerPoint?” one person wondered about new media. I’m regularly reminded that this term means all sorts of things to different people and the task of situating it in our present moment is, in part, the work of this program. At the same time, it never ceases to surprise and reorient me to recognize all of the precedents that previous generations of artists and designers have set in their explorations of art and technology.
Robert Rauschenberg’s multifaceted practice levels a kind of challenge to the newness of so-called “new media art.” My experience of Rauschenberg’s work has been limited primarily to his paintings and combines, with some exposure to his installations. In the 1960’s, however, an ongoing collaboration with engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories was initiated that deepens my appreciation for the scope of his vision—and the role of technological research as a catalyst for new ideas. Rauschenberg recognized that the technical limitations he confronted alone could be overcome by working with professionals dealing with similar issues in the context of business and industry. Their expertise and knowledge of recent developments provided a framework within which experimental ideas could be actualized while the artist’s non-traditional applications stretched the ingenuity and flexibility of the engineer.
9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering stands out among the early projects resulting from this cross-pollination of disciplines. A series of performances that occurred in New York during October of 1966, 9 Evenings pushed the boundaries of concept and technique at the scale of an arena. For the opening sequence, Robert Rauschenberg worked with Billie Klüver and fellow engineers at Bell Laboratories to stage Open Score, which unfolds as a sonic tennis match, a live infrared television triptych, and an amorphous vocal performance. Watching a video recording and reading descriptions of the performance, I can imagine how transfixed the audience must have been with the multimedia experience of Open Score. It’s clear that, for those involved, it was a deeply meaningful engagement; and out of those conversations, Experiments in Art and Technology, a loose collective of artists and engineers, was formed.
Twelve years later, in 1979, the first graduate program in alternative media was launched at New York University. It’s difficult not to think of ITP’s inauguration without reference to the artistic activity surrounding E.A.T. and new communication technologies in general. When discussing the program’s history, Red Burns cites the Portapak video recorder as an emerging technology that revolutionized documentary filmmaking by putting it into the hands of individuals. Here again we have a collaboration (albeit one step removed) between engineers—who managed to fit video equipment into a portable interface—and directors who took it to the streets. But ITP did not become a supplement to NYU’s film program, it sought a new level of engagement with its audience—the kind of engagement I’m seeking in my own work. Still today, ITP seems to define itself not by a specific medium, but by a specific approach, the hallmarks of which include creativity, innovation, diversity, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
What I think differentiates what we’re trying to do today from what Rauschenberg and his circle were doing is the nature of that collaboration. It seems there was a clearer delineation in Experiments in Art and Technology between the role of the artist and that of the engineer, a greater distance to cross in order for both sides to meet. Furthermore, from an engineering standpoint, Rauschenberg’s work was essentially reactive, rather than interactive. That is to say, the action was occurring in one direction, instead of generating new information from both ends that could produce unexpected results. And while it’s clear there is still a great need for experts without whom ideas could not be realized, I think the depth of crossover between art and science—not to mention other disciplines—is indicative of our less segmented, post-industrial modes of production. Artists should be in laboratories. Scientists should be in studios.
So maybe “interactive telecommunications” as a concept, despite being 30 years old and inconveniently polysyllabic, still retains a great deal of relevance to the vision of the program—and new media—in its contemporary context. Telecommunications, which might first bring to mind telephony, carries a much more general and immediate significance. Tele-, from the Greek for “far off,” combined with communication, from the Latin verb for “to share,” implies “sharing at a distance.” This is the constant challenge for the communicator in general and the artist in particular. And while the distance between the self and the other remains, the possibility of making a real connection with people, whether through performance or sound, text or multimedia, continues to move us.
Interactivity, for its part, is one dimension of new media that has drawn me to this place. Not only would I like to incorporate a new layer of dialogue into my current practice, but I’m interested in allowing new technologies to inform and guide the work in new directions. What that will look like is yet to be seen but it will consciously exist in relationship to its antecedents.
In this assignment we’ve been asked to design the interface for a device of our own imagination. Here is a rough sketch for a “climate modulator” that allows its user to control a mechanism that adjusts atmospheric conditions including temperature, wind, humidity, and precipitation.
The device, approximately seven inches long and two inches in diameter, operates with three steps: 1. sensing the current conditions, 2. setting the desired conditions, and 3. activating the modulation. The sensor on the left hand side of the cylinder is intended to read the current conditions when a button on that side is pressed. The four dials spanning the cylinder give readings for the current weather. Dials are rotated forward or back in correspondence with the kind and degree of change desired. Once each has been set accordingly, the button on the right hand side locks the dials in place. The interface glows when ready and the modulation is activated by pressing and holding the buttons on both sides simultaneously.
In theory, there would exist an infrastructure of towers in the location of the modulator’s use that would chemically “seed” the climate conditions in the vicinity of the user, setting in motion the desired weather pattern. The modulator could subsequently be used to gauge the progress of climatic adjustment and respond as necessary.
For our second week together, Maya Lin joined us for the latter half of Applications of Interactive Telecommunications Technology. Working at the intersection of art, science, and advocacy, Lin exudes a staid passion for the causes that premise her diverse memorials and installations. Her work today is deeply concerned with the environment, consumption habits, and envisioning a more sustainable future. Lin’s studio is primarily artists and architects who, together, use scientific data to build installations that raise awareness and inspire action. She also spoke of her interest in using the internet as a site for memorial.
It’s not difficult to see why Red would have Maya Lin come speak to us. She’s bringing together a variety of disciplines in her practice and using media to influence positive social change. I think the vast majority of people in this year’s class either come from or are interested in non-profit work and Lin has specifically requested ITP students to work in her studio. What really substantiates these projects is a level of scholarship that allows her to be conversant with researchers in their respective fields. I also appreciated that she’s not taking an overly dramatic or cynical approach to what are pretty dire issues. She believes that the reality itself is enough to move people and you don’t need shocking images or ominous music to convey that message. In fact, Maya Lin really embraces beauty in her work—sometimes to inspire action, other times to lament what has already been lost.
In this lab, we incorporated a potentiometer into the circuit, allowing us to change the resistance of the current to the electrical flow. The visual feedback is the variable brightness of the LED.
On the first day of Red’s class, artist and designer Vito Acconci spoke to us about his work. The presentation followed a linear trajectory of his development from a poet in the 1960′s, through his conceptual work in New York galleries in the 70′s and 80′s, and culminated in an embrace of architecture for all of its potential to engage the public with more universal language. Relentlessly contemporary, Acconci always seeks to position himself in the present and reject nostalgia. He said he likes listening to Alva Noto, for example.
Still, Acconci’s work follows a very particular kind of artistic evolution, one that’s always building upon itself. I like how his work in architecture flows out of a similar thought process as his previous incarnations. It also allows him to work differently than a traditionally trained architect would. His forms are a little too trendy for me but the model of a studio that can respond to a variety of commissions, like Olafur Eliasson’s, is one of the most compelling intersections of contemporary creative practice.
