0:12

everybody uh so my name is Nelson Hoff I’m an artist

0:18

um currently living near Peterborough out in the country but lived for quite a long time in

0:24

Montreal earlier in my life kind of became an artist there and then uh lived in Toronto for 20

0:31

years from from 1997 where I taught at Europe still teach at York I forget that

0:37

I’m not quite out of York so um I work in electronic media and on and

0:44

off with interactive forms for for many decades so my first foray into interact

0:50

was way back but that teledon system some of you might recall that in the early 80s so on and off with that

0:58

um so our panel is focused on well it’s

1:03

not any one thing I don’t think but definitely we’re going to be looking at uh embodiment term which came up in a

1:11

really interesting way in the first panel the land is embodied

1:18

um I think our I think our embodiment does uh zero in uh more directly on

1:24

um kind of distributed systems that include humans machines or Technologies or

1:31

computational systems um and that uh so so I guess a working

1:37

definition for us well one thing is that coming out of yesterday we liked the

1:42

idea of embodiment engaging people in a disorganizing and reorganizing of

1:50

perception noted that one because I liked it a lot and I would also say disturbing I think that term came up

1:57

disturbing perception um and so by by embodiment we mean being

2:03

inside a whole cognitive sensory system that is connected with its surround

2:10

like our bodies are um in which we encounter distributed agencies and these agencies are human

2:18

non-human and technological and of course non-human meaning organic

2:25

inorganic so really we’re trying to think of it as a whole distributed system so yes the land can come back in

2:32

with that sense of distributed um and another another idea that came up

2:39

yesterday right at the end of the day actually when we were talking was this um very established terminology called

2:46

the human and the loop that comes out of simulation language and methods that

2:51

that go way back probably back to cybernetics from the from the 1950s

2:57

classic cybernetics that have to do with um developing you know simulation systems

3:03

uh in which the uh the human is in a loop or in an interaction with

3:12

um with a technology and that it’s kind of interesting to think back to that because uh

3:19

we might want to be thinking about the human in that Loop is a little bit less kind of centered or being you know the

3:27

central figure so again that idea of dispersing um uh so yeah I’ve actually got a lot

3:33

more to say but I think I’ll hang on to it until after the presentations because we’ll be having a discussion

3:40

that will take these things up so our first presenter is David rugby uh David is an artist who’s been making

3:48

works of electronic video and installation Arts since 1982 also early

3:53

80s uh his practice has addressed issues of among other things digital surveillance

4:00

and what I call Process time I mean I know you’re interested in time but I don’t think you’ve ever necessarily used

4:06

that term for it he has exhibited internationally very well known and he’s

4:11

done several Major Art conditions so David lives in Toronto and he teaches as

4:17

a lecturer at the Ryerson University RTA School of media

4:27

thanks Neil thanks to the organizers for bringing us all together it was a fantastic discussion yesterday very

4:32

energizing and exciting and it’s great to have these opportunities out of the distractions of Our Lives to actually

4:39

spend some time thinking about these things or sharing our ideas about these things um the brief talk I’m going to give

4:45

really comes from a moment in time for me around 1989.

4:52

um and so I’ll be talking about ideas that came out of the research I did in

4:59

the 80s with body interaction with bodies and machines and which led me into the work

5:06

I was doing in the 90s which took off from that to start questioning what the implications of

5:13

that were for questions of artificial intelligence artificial intelligence at the time was much less capable than the

5:22

Deep learning Etc that we’re seeing now but it was something that really fasted me the question of what what it means to

5:28

think about producing a mind what do we understand a mind is and what does it mean to actually sit down and try to

5:34

program one so this is where this is I’m going back to 1989 talking about the

5:39

things that that moment which and I think it applies still to questions about the body in relationship to these

5:46

sorts of systems now so I’m going to see if I can read

5:52

my slides okay okay so the body is inconvenient In Praise of generative

5:57

frustration bodies are awkward remarkable difficult ambiguous fault prone and pleasureful

6:04

technology can augment replace displace and render our bodies invisible

6:10

is valuing the human body simply Nostalgia or romanticism so it’s an important it’s I think this

6:15

is a this is an open question I will never forget seeing stellarc for the first time for those of you who don’t

6:21

know stellarc he uh he has done a lot of things talking about going beyond the body or the disposability of the body

6:28

replacing the body and I got so angry in his the first lecture I heard of his that I my body temperature went way up

6:35

and after once I went afterwards I went wow that’s really interesting he actually helped me to confirm my biases

6:43

about the body and I found that actually in retrospect his intervention by placing play by describing this

6:50

challenge by putting out this challenge that the body is obsolete really helped to focus my mind and there was a really

6:55

valuable intervention so it is an open question is it simply Nostalgia and

7:01

Romanticism I think I tend to think that it’s not but I understand that it might be perceived that way

7:08

uh right so very nervous system this is a work I did through uh I apologize to

7:14

those who’ve seen this this tape too many times it was tape at some point anyway

7:19

um very nervous system is a system that used cameras to track body movement tried to gather information about the

7:26

Dynamics of movement rather than the locations of movement and controlled triggered modulated

7:31

virtual instrumentalists shall we say to compose music in real time to reflect

7:37

the movement that it saw and the move the music here is garbage really uh but

7:42

it is I think a very compelling it sets up a very compelling relationship

7:47

between the body and the system its job is to be uh to to tie things together to

7:55

to generate this coherent intense uh loop looping relationship so so the

8:02

music is just is is it has very utilitarian okay so hopefully the video will come up

8:10

don’t know if I have to do something else to do okay here we go will we have volume hope so

8:18

okay so uh in the system there’s a computer

8:23

uh looking through a camera into an empty space and every gesture that people make is

8:30

um essentially accompanied in real time by sounds that are intended to reflect something about the Dynamics of that

8:36

movement um and important to this is the fact

8:41

that it is a feedback system that you’re starting to respond to sounds that you’re hearing with New Movement so

8:46

there is a kind of a [Music] I’ll let it speak for itself for a moment

8:53

[Music]

9:06

[Music]

9:15

thank you [Music]

9:22

so that gives you a sense of a very nervous system

9:27

um so one of the things I was asking with very nervous system one of the questions I was asking was what does it mean to try to engage with a logical

9:33

system using the whole body so I was spending time programming computers I was sitting at my computer

9:40

sitting at the computer in bad posture with my body complaining

9:46

feeling awkward trying to forget that I had a body sort of living in the space of logical programming and then wanting

9:53

to understand so so can I turn this upside down can I use the computer you know manner that allows me to

10:00

reinforce my sense that I have a body to to reward me for having a body and to

10:05

allow me to explore that sense of having a body uh through the technology itself

10:11

so that’s one of the many reasons that this piece came into being

10:16

um so and what can I learn about my relationship with my body through

10:22

engaging in this way so uh the first thing I learned was that there is and I learned this it’s a known

10:29

fact but I learned it experientially time there’s a time delay inherent in Consciousness I discovered that it

10:36

seemed the system already knew I was going to move before I moved this was very confusing

10:42

I set up a system um for to especially to test this where I would have it respond with a very

10:48

noticeable very loud sound as soon as it saw a hint of movement from my body and I would stand there like a gunslinger uh

10:55

waiting to do the Quick Draw trying to be as still as possible and then suddenly move and every single time it

11:02

made the sound at the moment I decided I was about to move very very disturbing and it was only by

11:10

doing some research that I discovered the reason is that Consciousness tends to be at about a tenth of a second behind our motor movements so we make a

11:18

movement we make a decision to move we commit to the movement and we make the first initial movements before our

11:23

Consciousness is fully aware that we’ve made that decision so the body is ahead of the Mind in this innocence in this

11:28

way or in the mind of you know in Brackets there or in quotation marks so there’s a time delay and this creates a

11:35

fascinating confusion this is no longer clear whether the sound precedes the

11:40

movement or the movement precedes a sound and the sense of what’s in control of the other dissolves so it creates a

11:45

really interesting very tight uh feedback loop I was very inspired by Suzanne’s use of the Spiral in her work

11:52

we were talking about it last night there’s a sort of sense that that the feedback loop spirals inside itself it

11:57

gets Tighter and Tighter and Tighter so that there’s there’s the sense of

12:03

um what scheduling white is is lost so the next thing was distributed intelligence feeling my hand make a

12:10

decision so there are times when I felt that a sound was going to appear as a

12:15

result of my hand and it was the hand was feeling that the hand was felt like it was doing The Conjuring the decision

12:22

was not coming here but it was coming and I started to feel as though my brain

12:28

was more distributed through my body that it was not located here but in a diffuse sense invading my whole body

12:37

um diffusion of the barrier between self and environment one of the most interesting experiences I had that

12:42

helped to illuminate this was spending well maybe an hour in my studio working with very nervous system and then

12:47

walking outside under the street I lived on Spadina Avenue in Toronto very very busy hectic Street full of activity and

12:54

as I walked up the street after this experience I felt as though every sound I heard was connected to my

13:00

movement I felt a sort of an echo or a shadow or a reverberation of the

13:07

interactive experience I had been experiencing in my studio transforming my relationship with things

13:13

around me so that was a really interesting thing and I felt then I having felt that back in the studio I

13:19

started to realize that what was happening was and and this was actually something that

13:25

was uh remarked to me and erect upon to me by some choreographers who used my system

13:30

um that although it really turns you in on yourself in the sense that you’re interacting with yourself the experience

13:36

is not one of going in and closing in on yourself but you feel that you’re

13:42

opening out into your environment so it is something that starts to melt

13:47

this sense that there is a membrane right here and the self is in here and everything else is out there and so it

13:54

becomes a sort of Continuum of of relative engagement or something so the

13:59

body expands out to fill the space and the space around you uh absorbs into the

14:04

body and that that was a really interesting um experience all unexpected experiences

14:09

that would for them to be generated by a computer it was very exciting to be led on this strange journey through code

14:17

through this bunch of really the very simple mathematical calculations really happening very quickly and then

14:24

going out into space and going back into the machine going into space again responsibility the intermingling of

14:31

action and observation I was really at the time I was working on very nervous

14:36

system I spent a lot of time trying to read bergsol’s matter and memory I’m not gifted at reading philosophy

14:43

although I love philosophy I was reading my way through matter and memory and one

14:48

of the things he talks about a lot and he seems to be really trying to get at is this question of so there’s a we take in the world around

14:57

us and we then output actions and so what is in the middle there what is

15:02

there of self or something that is doing this translation that like is it purely reflexive or is there a more complicated

15:08

mechanism mechanism that’s inside there so I was thinking about that I was thinking eventually about the role also

15:14

an improvisation of the integration the tight integration of action and observation that you are

15:21

active but not mindlessly active that every action had to be accompanied by a

15:27

simultaneous constant real-time awareness of the implications of those actions and that was the state of mind

15:33

that was necessary to engage most happily with very nervous system like kind of uh dual input output

15:40

simultaneous inputs output State what I said started to describe it to myself as being responsibility the ability to

15:46

respond the ability to act and respond and to to to accept my agency in the world without while understanding that I

15:53

didn’t have total control over what was happening um The Continuous presence of the human

15:59

in the loop troubles and revitalizes corrects the data in every cycle so this

16:05

was an interesting thing the code itself was not terribly intelligent or terribly rich it was enriched by the fact that that it

16:14

took me to places I hadn’t expected and my going to those new places added new things into the input to the code and

16:19

that came out again so there was a kind of and any errors and this is kind of fascinating any errors that happened if

16:25

the machine did not successfully translate my movements into an appropriate sound I would collaborate to make it more

16:32

convincing by extending that gesture a little longer until the sound happens so there was a kind of many layers of of

16:39

complex engagement with the system including perhaps an overwillingness to

16:44

be credulous towards the interaction that was happening uh awareness distributed through the

16:49

body is different than focused thought okay well that’s fairly obvious I spent a lot of time during that time also

16:54

doing experiments with diffuse perception so I walked down the street for two weeks in Toronto paying locking

17:02

my fovea at the because close to the vanishing point as I could find in deadening that and paying attention only

17:08

to things that were disappearing out of my field of view so really paying attention to the periphery and experiencing a very different sense of

17:15

space relationship to the space that was that that afforded and that was very

17:20

connected also to this to the state that was appropriate for uh being in very nervous system which was not to be

17:27

willfully focusing on controlling something but to be maximally engaged on

17:33

as many different bandwidths and temporal wavelengths and things as possible at the same time

17:39

so challenges the tactile sense does not present okay

17:45

so I’m I’m just going to create a little space here um

17:50

so the body the body is as a sensing system is very different from the from

17:56

the eyes the body as the sort of skin surface and the neurons the the the the the tactile sensing neurons very

18:02

different from the eyes which take in a what is when it’s easily replicated as a

18:07

very generic field of dots it’s almost mathematical Cartesian field of dots or

18:14

the ears which are very nice time series they’re receiving a very nice time series which we can easily replicate

18:19

tactile sense does not present a conveniently regular or normalized feel of data so while we can easily create

18:25

lovely interactive sound and interactive video and we can track and we can create

18:31

nice Vision systems and I hear nice hearing systems it’s way harder to think

18:36

about how to take seriously what the body is actually doing and digitize it and incorporate into these interactions

18:42

directly as opposed to indirectly as it happens a very nervous system all the nerves in our body seem to be

18:49

slightly differently purposed so it’s not a it’s it’s a heterogeneous a very heterogeneous field of things which are

18:55

associated with very different functions and histories of functions and qualities of gesture Etc

19:01

um and our sensors and actuators in the realm of touch are very poor and our language around touch and embodiment are

19:07

lacking so we have lots of words for seeing and hearing uh you know the whole the whole sphere of Music we have vast a

19:13

vast uh vocabulary for describing these things the same in in imagery but in in

19:19

touch we have a very uh a real limited set of uh of words to describe it

19:26

um and the sensors and actuators that we have available are also very limited there have been some really exciting attempts to come to terms with with this

19:34

uh the the tactile bytes or tactile bits is it tangible bits tangible bits that MIT is a really interesting attempt to

19:41

to deal with touch in these ways but there’s it’s almost impossible to capture the full complexity of of our

19:47

sensing system of our uh tactile sensing system using technology I often reflect

19:53

on the fact that some of my biggest solutions to challenging problems have come after a long period of thinking

19:59

hard at the computer when stepping into the shower when my entire body is suddenly simultaneously being stimulated

20:06

at every point and as though that involves a shift in a way of thinking which unlocked a thought process it was

20:12

getting stuck as I was sitting banging my head against the computer screen uh and touch and bodily experience are

20:19

useless to Conventional Notions of power except as a site of reward and Punishment so it’s not it’s easy to use

20:26

an image as a powerful thing for politics or power and sound can be used very effectively but but touch tactility

20:33

and embodiment are very hard to use they don’t play into those same structures there’s not the same investment on every

20:39

level uh government investment technological investment into trying to solve some of these problems maybe we

20:45

don’t want them to solve those problems that’s another question but they’re certainly not nowhere near the kind of investment you know the investment that

20:51

went into generating the camcorder an enormous amount of money went into making it possible for us eventually to

20:57

have a phone a camera here but you know even just the the handheld Sony Handycam

21:02

that was a huge amount of investment to make that happen yeah okay I’m almost done here

21:09

um so the body is in danger of falling out of culture all the things that are becoming privileged that can be taken in

21:15

effectively by machines and put out by machines are things that conveniently sidestep the body directly and I think

21:22

this is a big problem or I’m asking is this a big problem does this matter we’re so familiar with having a body

21:29

that we take its presence for granted so we’re not really good at understanding how the body is important because it’s

21:35

always there so we don’t understand what it would be like to have it missing essential part of Being Human involves

21:41

being situated in a moving vulnerable highly subjective and inherently incomplete point of view

21:49

we are defined by our incompleteness and I’m going to read this we are defined by incompleteness the fact that we are a

21:56

small fragment of an indiscernible and unfathomable hole our point of view in the world is indelibly marked by the

22:02

character of our body on your face with everything around us the characteristics of our embodiment include our embedded

22:08

embeddedness in time our experiential envelope is narrowed to an almost inconceivably thin moment and

22:14

we use the faculties of memory and learning to expand the sliver into a sense of the world the Technologies we attempt to stretch

22:20

beyond the limitations imposed by our incompleteness but incompleteness will always be the nature

22:26

of existence and I would argue it is also the motor of our existence generating desire and the ephemeral

22:31

ephemeral sense of meaningfulness Consciousness is perhaps our awareness

22:37

of this incompleteness and culture of flowers out of it so this awareness of incompleteness

22:42

forces us to be Masters and imagining beyond the limits of our immediate content or context so it’s almost a

22:48

sense that the whole notion of philosophy Etc is generated by the fact that we are aware of that problematic or

22:54

incompleteness so Consciousness arises out of the tension between what we are and what we can imagine Consciousness

23:01

flowers from the body what would be be without this generative frustration so just to sum up where this leads to in my

23:08

thinking about contemporary artificial intelligence and machine learning is the problem that we that

23:15

they rely on massive data sets to to become effective and we can and so there

23:22

have been remarkable advances in getting good data sets for images and good data sets for sounds we will it will be very

23:28

difficult to have really good data sets for the body so the body is being left out again maybe that’s a good thing but

23:34

the body is being left out of the equation and I do find myself wondering what is an intelligent agents or what is

23:42

what what culture artificial intelligence generates if it does not come with a sense of the experience of

23:49

the body which seems to be something that helps to Define at least what our human culture is is based upon and I

23:55

think basically yeah so the final question is you know and this is for the data science nerds

24:01

out there can this be modeled as an objective function because this this should be modeled as something that can

24:08

be made the goal for a machine learning task or are we all models of machine

24:13

learning or are all our models of machine learning insufficient for this task so just uh

24:18

the nerdy end of the question thank you [Applause]

24:30

to anybody shouting out a vocabulary issue because like there’s a lot of

24:35

terms being you know being used here that might be less than anybody

24:41

you don’t want to have a definition of deep learning you’re okay sorry

24:47

oh sorry I thought do you want to have a definition of deep learning or shall we just proceed looks

24:53

like we just proceed okay I’m good uh okay so our next presenter is

25:00

Christian Carlson Kristen is an assistant professor in the Arts technology program at Illinois State

25:07

University she explores the role that computation plays in embodied creative processes so

25:13

her background is in movement technical Theory theater important not Theory

25:21

um interaction design and programming so uh you know she’s sort of working across

25:26

choreography media performance and she also publishes in the field of

25:32

cognitive science uh Computing Electronic Arts so I always

25:37

find that interesting so many of us are writers at the same time

25:43

um you know trying to find answers to questions that parallel what we do in our practices okay Kristen

25:50

great thank you um let’s do okay great so so yeah so

25:58

um my background is really in movement somatic practices and choreography so um

26:04

but I came to technology early on in my practice because I was really fascinated by the way that

26:10

uh technology and thinking through procedural code made me reconsider my compositional processes

26:17

so um I’ve done a lot of like I’m I’m this presentation will kind of flip a little

26:23

bit of now I’m working in code so much that I’m thinking very much about what is my body experience in terms of what I

26:30

am uh emitting and what can be captured by the technology as well as what is my

26:36

then receiving process and and getting back out of generative Works um

26:41

and let’s see here so so just for those who don’t know

26:47

because I always have to Define this choreography really is a compositional process of the body it really privileges

26:53

sensory information and the ex the relationship of the body within an environment and in relationship to other

26:59

bodies so sensation and tactility and awareness and expansion

27:06

is really important in this process um and I think it’s really fascinating

27:12

because that knowledge is really what the decision-making process is in choreography uh dancers and

27:18

choreographers are making choices based on what they feel um which is really fascinating when we

27:24

start exploring of Technology um

27:31

so we’ll I’ll keep moving through because yes this is a little small for me to see but I have to jump into pop

27:37

culture just for a second here because um motion capture is such a big part of movies and and video games yet we’re

27:45

still not able to really separate uh like in video games they still re-record motion capture data for every single

27:51

character they’re not using machine learning yet to manipulate or reuse that data just because it’s too expensive

27:58

whether computational AAR financially um but then you’ll see like in Beauty and the Beast here that the the quality

28:06

of the motion for those characters is really important and so there’s still you know this actor has lots of padding

28:13

and he’s wearing you know funny things on his feet to give him some some additional qualities of movement in his

28:20

real person that is then we’re rigging another character onto um

28:25

in the post-production process but I find that’s fascinating because

28:31

there has been a lot of work that does try to separate the qualities of movement performance so how you separate

28:39

um one of the movement Frameworks that’s used often is called lava movement analysis and they talk about effort

28:44

qualities where you can pull out elements of time and weight and flow

28:49

in space and and in a way you’re kind of trying to separate what are the forces and the

28:56

energies of the movement away from the actual space and time position of that body part

29:02

um and there’s been a lot of work in this we’re still not there yet

29:07

um movement data you know who knew it was really complex and has a lot of parts to it and when you’re Gathering

29:14

things at 260 you know frames per second that’s that’s a lot of information to Crunch

29:20

um but one of the places I like to go I’m gonna have to turn and read this real quick

29:27

um but Mercy Cunningham is a famous choreographer whose partners with John

29:32

Cage and he did a lot of work with technology and has this great quote that I look at some things and say well

29:39

that’s impossible for a dancer to do but if I look long enough I could think of a way it could be done not exactly as it’s

29:45

done on the screen but it could prompt my eye to see something I’ve never thought of before

29:51

um he was quite advanced in his career when um in the

29:58

90s someone brought a computer to him that would do some animation of choreography

30:05

um and he didn’t really know how to use a computer at that point and someone helped him construct these like weird

30:11

dances on avatars that he then was so fascinated with how he could try and get

30:16

his dancers to perform those works because he never you know again as choreographers are working from the body

30:23

and from their environment and any Inspirations they can they can find this

30:29

was a totally New Perspective and while a choreographers and artists have worked with technological Concepts before and

30:37

procedural ways of thinking this was a very new new thing

30:43

um so I’m going to separate the last bit a little bit into talking about

30:50

data recognition as how you’re Gathering input which is the how we’re capturing

30:55

data from the body um and I’m just going to talk about a couple of projects but

31:01

um I’ve been really fascinated with more of some applied things recently like I’ve been working on a

31:08

physical therapy project where um uh patients always need more motivation

31:15

to stay engaged in the rehabilitation process because it’s hard to just do those actions over and over again but I

31:21

was surprised when I started talking to physical therapists they weren’t interested in the qualities of the motion at all they didn’t care if you

31:28

did them fast or slow they didn’t care if you you know had a lot of tension while you

31:33

were doing them um as long as you you know extended and flexed your arms it was it was fine

31:42

um but just from my background and all of this I think that there’s something

31:48

there to explore so we’ve been doing a little bit of work to capture qualities of movement along with the

31:54

body positions to create a game that that some that patients can play

32:01

otherwise I’m still surprised at what what works and what doesn’t um so we right now have two games one is

32:07

that you’re you’re you’re doing arm extensions and flicking so you’re doing

32:12

short uh quick light movements in order to to move through asteroids but this

32:19

works great you’d think that the effort quality part of the the qualitative part of this would be challenging whereas the

32:27

next game you’re doing squats so all you’re doing is bending your knees but um I have not gotten this to work yet

32:33

after I think we’ve collected data from maybe 50 different or more

32:40

people doing squats and been applying machine learning in order to to develop models of this and um so I’m always a

32:48

little bit surprised at how what things work and what things don’t

32:54

but we have people playing with that and then we have um so then there’s the generation component and this is the

33:00

part I’ve kind of really fallen in love with um mainly because

33:06

uh I’ll say that this this kind of a work has come to really strongly out of my

33:13

choreographic practice because choreographers have um you know like most artists you spend

33:19

years developing techniques and skills that are based in a large history

33:26

that you’re trying to become very proficient at as well as developing new

33:31

ideas and World Views about how you’re going to mer you know shift and change those skills in new environments

33:38

um but it’s so easy to fall into your own

33:44

patterns and develop habits that are really difficult to get out of and it’s one thing

33:50

to you know you are always looking for new inspiration and sometimes you find the right inspiration that’ll work you

33:56

out of those patterns but sometimes it’s a little bit more challenging um so I’ve done some work designing a

34:02

system that would help me get out of those patterns and I found that

34:08

um just providing new inspiration was not enough that it was really easy to

34:14

still fall back into patterns but then and I thought maybe it’s just me maybe I’m just a weird person so it’ll I’ll

34:19

give it to some other choreographers but I could give something that would create really weird shapes to a dancer and they

34:26

would do a ballet phrase out of this and I have no idea you know how like did you

34:32

even look at the system but it’s just the way that depending on

34:38

whether the information is too foreign to them or the way they choose to

34:43

interpret it was really fascinating in a way so um so

34:49

I found through a lot of exploration that I needed to do a system that kind of had two parts so one is inspiring

34:56

people to do something new but the other one is actually trying to pinpoint what are some of those patterns that I wanted

35:03

to to pull back from or inhibit so um so I worked on kind of having this

35:09

two-part system that would try and pull back certain patterns so that there was more space to explore the new things

35:15

so this kind of manifested in um this is not the prettiest system we’re still using the Carnegie mellon’s mocap model

35:22

right now but um we’ve uh I’ve worked with a team that is

35:28

um taken this original the anti-animation software from the 90s called Dance forms we now have an iPad

35:33

version of it called I dance forms um yes and so and it’s sort of keyframe

35:41

Animation based so you’ve got all these little stick figures and you can you know poke at different joints and

35:47

manipulate them and create body positions that way and then you can animate through them to create phrases you can also use

35:54

um camera to the camera to capture body positions and then map them onto things

36:00

um but so I started really playing with designing a generative component for

36:06

this because for all you know this technology has now been around for you know over 25 years

36:12

um and it’s really like the for a choreographer to use it they really need to focus on

36:18

you know pinpointing joints and designing things on this very detailed level which is not really how dancers

36:24

work when they’re sensing and moving through their environments and listening to other people so um so this generative component

36:33

still based in the keyframe animation component but um I I in my little system of inhibiting

36:40

some things and ex pushing other ones um he’s a genetic algorithm in order to

36:47

generate different positions based on things that would be

36:52

asymmetrical unstable because instability promotes movement because you can’t stay still

36:58

unusual joint angles just because it makes people think differently and kept it limb focused instead of core and in

37:06

an earlier version of this I also included a combination of like

37:12

qualitative effort information as well where as you’re trying to make sense of whatever this is you’re also trying to

37:18

do it in a way that’s quick and strong which is a lot of information for a

37:24

dancer but through this it’s it’s it works in the way that

37:30

dancers can can generate ideas they can participate in the function like it’s got a parameterized fitness function so

37:37

they can it’s all based on law bonds so you can shift you know how much extension for the limbs there is and

37:44

um whether you want something to movement to have happen more on one side of the body or across the body

37:52

um did I say there

37:57

and so um but so it gives all these interesting opportunities for how someone can

38:03

interpret the data which still is pretty you know as you you’re looking at this

38:09

as a static form which is great as an inspiration um Marie chanard has a has a a great

38:16

piece where she took a book of I think it’s ink blots that look very similar to this

38:23

sort of work and the whole thing is like showing someone moves that piece next to

38:28

think what someone moves the next piece so um the sort of this framing of how to

38:33

create dance out of inspiration has been used forever

38:38

um but I think here’s an example do I need to hit the play button

38:46

one more time okay okay so this is an example of someone developing a phrase based on

38:55

the animation that they created

39:07

and this one was pretty traditional of dancers creating you know expecting to create a phrase this next one was a

39:14

little bit different and that um this dancer was very fascinated with

39:19

the with the animation process and um and the experience of touch and how

39:25

her her current choreographic process was very much about what it felt like to stroke her arm and how she could feel

39:32

both from her arm to her hand from her hand to her arm and what that meant as

39:38

she was moving and so she was trying to animate that and she was surprised that it took her like 15 frames or something

39:43

and it’s still as you see this it’s it’s like there’s a lot of happening in a

39:49

very slow amount of time and then it just like the rest of it kind of looks thrown away because it’s because it’s

39:54

quick foreign

40:04

that’s basically it um perfect perfect okay so um so uh the

40:13

last thing I’m just going to wrap up with is then so you know we’ve had a little bit of the recognition of how

40:20

you’re performing and that information is captured in order to control other systems but then um

40:25

uh the flip side of how you’re generating information then you can interpret and and take and receive that

40:32

information so then playing with interaction there’s been a little bit of other work that is played with both uh

40:39

of those together so for example I’ll just say this under the system um the performer is wearing an

40:46

accelerometer that is detecting effort qualities um and so that is controlling some of

40:51

the parameters of a of a visual system there’s also a connect that’s that’s uh detecting your body position and

40:59

changes in through space and time um and then there is a Elvis I believe

41:06

generated visuals that go along with us that are mapped to various qualities so

41:11

it was it’s a very interesting experience to be playing back and forth with you know that you are you’re the

41:17

expressiveness of your movement is controlling or guiding a particular system but

41:23

you’re also responding to it in the same way hopefully very system similar to very nervous system and that you know

41:29

you’re both to be both the the controller and the receiver uh and

41:35

it is such a fun improvisational place to be um and gives you a lot of space to play

41:41

but I’m going to end it there terminology

41:47

[Music]

41:53

phonetic algorithm no honestly you you know if you’re good

41:58

that’s fine but just in case all right

42:03

maybe later okay so Chris Salter on the far left

42:09

there is an artist and he’s a Concordia University Research

42:15

chair in New Media technology and the census accordion Montreal

42:20

and a professor of computation arts in the department of design and computation

42:25

arts and co-director of the hexagram Network which is a big research group that crosses several universities in

42:32

Montreal Chris uh thanks now uh so I just want to also

42:37

thank Ryan and everybody at Art engine for the invitation it’s been great yesterday and also today

42:44

um so I want to uh contrast two projects in my talk one is from a massive

42:51

Hollywood Machinery which just opened in La I’m not going to talk too much about

42:57

this project but and the other is a project that I developed that I’m mainly going to talk about today called haptic feel which has been touring in Europe

43:03

since last year and what they do is they pose two very different models of bodily

43:09

experience so one is based on virtual reality this alien zoo and the other is based on what we might call mixed

43:15

reality which is the kind of mixing between the digital and the physical

43:21

um the other difference is that one amplifies the sensorium your experience of the senses and gives you everything uh and the other removes uh Vision

43:29

haptic field so the other sense is kind of uh take over so I’m going to just show you this weird review I just found

43:35

on YouTube of this project because there’s no documentation of this this is just opened and it’s a it’s obviously

43:41

very uh it was in stealth mode so this gives you a little bit of sense of this alien Zoo pop-up project that’s going to

43:48

be franchised around the world by this new company called Dreamscape immersive which is Steven Spielberg is behind it

43:53

and big movie companies okay now we’re gonna see if I push that

43:59

button once more what’s going on Rich dimiro here rich on Tech and I want to tell you

44:04

about a virtual reality experience I did that is literally unbelievable I have

44:10

never done anything like this so um let me explain I love VR I think virtual reality is going to be the

44:16

future of everything but realistically all these little headsets and stuff we have none of them come close to what I

44:22

experienced uh through something called alien Zoo so this is a new one month

44:27

pop-up uh immersive experience that’s available at the Westfield Century City Mall that’s in West Los Angeles and

44:35

alien zoo is kind of like the name of the experience it comes from a company called Dreamscape immersive so who is

44:42

Dreamscape immersive well this is their first big public-facing project it is

44:47

open now and here’s the deal there are some Heavy Hitters behind this company investors including AMC because they

44:55

know Cinema is changing you’ve got iMacs you’ve got former heads of Studios like

45:00

DreamWorks you’ve got three Hollywood Studios on board Steven Spielberg is an

45:07

investor in this thing and part of it so these are some big people with big roots in entertainment and they are looking

45:13

for sort of the next big thing in entertainment and I will be honest I think they found it

45:19

so I don’t want to give everything away about what happens but imagine you step into a virtual world

45:25

and you are part of it and you’re part of the storyline you’re part of the experience so let me explain how this

45:32

happens so you go to Century City Mall you get a little ticket for this experience called alien zoo and you walk

45:38

in and there’s six people at a time that get to go to a showing and the show is uh 12 minutes okay and I can’t even call

45:45

it a show because it’s really an experience so you go inside and it’s really cool looking inside

45:51

um I mean just the design of it is really neat and um I don’t know what the premise is but you’re kind of an

45:56

Explorer Adventure or whatever you want and then you go and you get suited up so they literally put a VR headset on you a

46:03

backpack on you some sort of gloves on your hands and also on your feet so that

46:09

way your entire body and I didn’t realize this until all of a sudden it happens uh you turn virtual so when you

46:16

go into this pod you see six other people with you the six people are standing next to you all of a sudden

46:22

when they flip this switch you all turn virtual that’s called motion capture but it’s in

46:29

real time all right now this is haptic field this was presented um in Europe last summer this

46:36

is the one of the largest museums in in Berlin the Martin group is about in an exhibition on immersion

46:42

and this describes a little bit of this experience

46:50

well maybe not let’s see side okay right synthetic field tries to

46:56

create a kind of experience where the senses start to merge and mix together visitors arrive and they put on a

47:04

garment when one is in this suit one emits light and one also feels vibration

47:10

people put on these goggles which basically Cloud their vision and then they move through a series of rooms that

47:17

have varying levels of sensory input you don’t really have a sense of depth you

47:23

only see other people moving as Shadows that emit light so there’s a kind of weird communication happening between

47:30

each body and the room and then you start to move through the other spaces occasionally the room completely becomes

47:37

white at times it becomes very very dark suddenly the walls seem to emit light the final space is saturated in a kind

47:44

of dim color which is changing very gradually in many ways the visitors experience is the content of the work

47:49

there’s an incredibly wide range of experience that people describe from

47:55

Terror to ecstasy to a kind of meditative State I seem to work as a

48:00

relation between people and their environments and how those things are merging and interacting with each other

48:06

so here’s a little bit of um just a short impression of this

48:41

[Music]

48:47

foreign

49:06

[Music]

49:27

[Music]

49:37

okay so this this is what we call kind of performative environment or sensory

49:44

environment so the public moves through a series of luminous and Sonic spaces within a kind of continual time frame so

49:51

some people stay 20 minutes some people stay 40 50 minutes even sometimes longer

49:56

and there are different groups of people up to 18 people at a time can be in this environment and so you enter this is the

50:03

line people line up and then they put on this clothing and then we put on these

50:09

these uh actuators which are small devices they’re similar to the Technologies in your cell phone they’re

50:14

all wirelessly controlled they’re called the vibro pixels because they both produce light but they also produce vibration at certain points on the body

50:21

and um and then basically the audience puts on these kinds of safety goggles which

50:28

are just frosted but the frosting does something very strange because what it does is it clouds your vision it doesn’t

50:34

remove it entirely but it clouds it so your understanding of how you find Visual cues in space how you move toward

50:42

objects is completely transformed and and Disturbed so it’s as if you’re

50:47

walking through a kind of fog where you can see but you can’t but you can’t really see

50:53

um and of course then you start to feel these kinds of vibrations across your body and so sometimes the sense is that

51:00

what you’re feeling on your body you’re actually seeing in space because certain of the lights are synchronized with

51:05

those vibrations and sometimes they’re not now um each each of the rooms so in in this

51:12

environment there were four very large scale rooms about 190 square meters moving through these spaces and each one

51:19

has a different kind of state to it one is very very dark and so you’re not really particularly sure of where where

51:25

you are and then you enter into a much larger room where you have many many of these points of light hanging at

51:31

different heights in the ceiling but again these lights are blurred they’re they’re they’re they’re quite

51:38

um let’s say uh like haloed in a way um this is this big room

51:44

um and and of course there’s other people around you um and and so as a company kinds of

51:51

sound structures as well in one room there’s binaural audio which is audio which is uh kind of moving back and

51:57

forth um beating between two very close frequencies so you tend to hear sounds that are actually not there one room is

52:04

much more saturated sometimes the room suddenly goes black and then bursts with very bright white uh Xenon light which

52:12

is a very very cold white light so your whole field of vision vanishes briefly and then you go into a room in which the

52:20

light is no longer in the air but on the wall and in fact every point of light emits sound as well so as you move

52:25

toward the light you hear sound coming out of it um and you’re also again feeling these these vibrations on you

52:32

um and and and and then the final room is this kind of room again video can

52:37

demonstrate this because the colors and the shapes are very different in terms of your vision versus what camera sees

52:43

but there’s a kind of a field of light above you it’s not around you but it’s somehow in the air and you don’t know

52:49

where it is um so there’s a sense of kind of a void in space now what becomes interesting is

52:57

that there are patterns that kind of take place so it’s very very scored there’s there’s no interaction in the

53:02

sense that there’s some kind of sensor that measures like what David was showing earlier the very nervous system for an earlier project of his in which

53:10

you know your movement is picked up by camera and then that camera the sensor

53:15

basically maps that to some type of media there’s none of that but at the same time there’s an incredible amount

53:21

of interaction and as we think of an interaction as human interaction with the environment as you see kind of in

53:27

this images of people holding each other and falling and dancing and you know kind of getting lost

53:34

now the interesting thing is my my question is what happens to oneself in haptic field

53:40

um and why did I show you this alien Zoo project earlier well what we’ve done not

53:46

only as as artists but also um from a kind of a research perspective is interview audiences after these

53:52

experiences and we’ve done these which I was in China I’ve done this in Europe we’re about to doing it in Indonesia and

53:57

next uh in the summer uh it’s a very very different cultural context so in Berlin we interviewed about 100 people

54:04

out of the 12 000 that came for one month so this exhibition um and we’re trying to understand their

54:10

responses to the work what what’s actually happening to them what’s happening to their bodies in space

54:16

what’s happening to others around them um so what’s what’s interesting here is

54:23

that there’s a kind of diffused or dispersed perceiving of the world

54:30

um and so many of the visitors in our interviews and there’s a group of people who are speaking together it’s it’s it’s

54:36

my team but it’s also the audience uh in small groups so it’s not individuals

54:41

it’s actually groups of four or five people so people speak and then start to share collectively their experience even

54:47

though they can’t necessarily see the others what becomes very interesting is that people describe the presence the sense

54:55

of others around them but they cannot see them so they sense somebody but

55:02

unlike for instance this uh virtual VR project I showed you earlier there’s no

55:08

direct one-to-one correspondence between my body and everybody else’s you know so it’s it’s diffused you sense somebody

55:15

but you cannot see them and so if you can’t see somebody who start to behave in your in your body very differently

55:21

than if you can see someone so what happened for instance is people start to do things and they say this uh that they

55:28

normally would not do in everyday life they started dancing they started doing weird kinds of movements they start moving slowly they they kind of start

55:36

performing for themselves but for others but without the fear of the social Amore is taking place that you see when like

55:43

if I started to take my clothes off here you would be like okay that’s very strange um but people would do that in that room

55:49

because you would only get a sense of like the presence but not the the representation of a body the other

55:55

interesting thing is is that there’s a term that comes from the 1960s from an anthropologist named E.T Hall Edward T

56:01

Hall called proxemics and proxemics are the sense of how culture creates certain

56:07

distances between us we establish certain understanding of space based on our cultural understanding our cultural

56:13

training and and what becomes very interesting how do you feel is that goes out the window uh so you know normally

56:19

you wouldn’t get too close to somebody if you didn’t know them well people started to touch it you watch people try

56:25

to touch others not knowing they’re there they don’t know where they are in space because they’re actually not in

56:32

your field of vision so people would go reach out into nothingness and the person would be five or six feet away

56:38

from them and then they would try to move toward the other person the other person would kind of move backwards so we would watch these kinds of very

56:43

interesting um dynamics that that occurred now just

56:49

to finish up um the comments people have are extremely interesting one person said

56:54

they felt like they were connected to everyone they didn’t care who they were they didn’t even care about their gender

56:59

or their uh it was beyond gender they actually said they felt connected like fireflies do you know so they felt the

57:07

others were fireflies another woman claimed that she felt like she was moving through the stages of her life she said well it’s dark and then I I see

57:13

some light and I move toward it but it’s actually not there and and I Stumble and I feel like I’m falling and and then I

57:20

realize I’m I’m this is how I experience the world it’s like I cried a grasp or something and then it it’s not there and

57:27

then I you know I grasp again and then it appears and then but I can’t hold on to it um so in many ways haptic field is a

57:34

kind of work for the attention to overwhelmed you know so no one can go on their phone and check Facebook they they

57:41

can’t they’re not connected to the electronic World in any way even though they’re in a completely artificial

57:48

technologized space you know um and and there’s a term that James

57:53

Austin who’s a neuroscientist and also a Zen practitioner it’s written this very large book a lot many years ago because

57:59

Zen in the brain talks about when he talks about the notion of absorption and he says that in absorption

58:07

um absorption and chain it involves a kind of change of focus but it also signifies a sense of being

58:14

held or transfixed or riveted in which

58:19

um other energy infuses the act of attending to something and I I start to

58:25

find that most of my work is very much about this act of attending how do you attend to things that are not actually

58:31

perceptually apparent or clear to you and because our attention is so

58:37

fragmented by um by swiping on the phone and looking at the Instagram feed or by by

58:45

constantly receiving input when the input of the environment becomes reduced

58:50

uh your chain your attention starts to transform um and I’ll just finish up

58:57

um and play one comment so there was an earlier project we did called um illinx which is a term in Greek which

59:06

means vertigo and ailing was a similar project although you evolve four people uh as

59:14

opposed to a whole group and they were also wearing clothing that has Wireless like embedded uh vibration and this was

59:20

more complex um and uh again people went through very large environment without kind of

59:26

knowing where they were but for the first seven minutes they sat in total darkness and they just felt almost micro level vibrations across their body and

59:34

then the second part they were asked to walk through a very large space and this is a group of very famous musicians from

59:40

the US called underground resistance uh who went through the environment and I’ll just play you a comment uh from

59:46

from one of them uh space built like after you got an

59:54

operation and you didn’t make it you died and you’re

59:59

you’re wondering what’s coming next

1:00:05

you’re dead you know you’re dead but the electronic party was still going

1:00:10

yeah you can’t everything that you knew

1:00:15

is gone and you don’t know what to expect it’s just uh it was the strangest feel

1:00:23

the further into what you went the further away from what you knew

1:00:30

so I find that very interesting the further into it the further you didn’t

1:00:36

know and so in in very interesting ways I think these projects deal with the

1:00:41

fact that the more presence uh or the more embodied we feel the less we have a

1:00:48

sense of the self that we so hold on to so dearly thank you

1:00:55

well

1:01:01

um throwing out all my notes I had of course so well that was interesting because I

1:01:08

thought overall that um you know we’re not we’re not seeing in the in the works that you guys all showed anything you’d

1:01:15

call strong AI or you know those kinds of like agents that pass the touring

1:01:21

test so we you know believe that their intelligent computers but I wonder if

1:01:27

you can each comment on um how nonetheless uh there are aspects to what you’re

1:01:34

doing that um they invoke a kind of getting ready or Readiness you know like you talked

1:01:41

about uh Rich Menards ink blotter or your genetic algorithms you know they’re a kind of their chance they come from

1:01:48

what we would call like a somewhere else you know or there’s a very strong sense

1:01:53

of a someplace else it doesn’t have to be personified in any way

1:01:59

um you know same here that there the system does something unexpected so how

1:02:04

how do you feel it’s kind of two-part question because the other part is uh we could leave it but I’ll just

1:02:11

launch it um do you think that that we’re actually going to perceive a threshold you know

1:02:17

between um feeling in control running our Technologies and uh you know really

1:02:24

strong ai’s machine Learning Systems where we just where they are autonomous

1:02:30

is there an R autonomous out there you know and we’re going to know when we cross that threshold but anyway first

1:02:36

question first like how is there a sort of Readiness yeah that’s a pretty big philosophical one think about it but how

1:02:42

is there a sort of Readiness sense in what you’re doing who wants to go first

1:02:49

that Readiness for uh Readiness for

1:02:54

um this the sense of and pardon aliens yeah no Readiness for uh a kind

1:03:02

of otherness like that they’re a ton and you know that there’s uh some agency there that is beyond what you’ve

1:03:08

programmed in and what what you’re able to run you know to control yeah so I made a conscious decision during the 10

1:03:14

years I worked on very nervous system to not take a step towards having the system system adapt to the user or learn

1:03:21

from the user for a very specific reason and that was that I realized I did not

1:03:26

understand enough about my own response in the space or other people’s response to the system I needed to start before I

1:03:33

started to add the complexity of an intelligence or an Adaptive system I needed to know better what was actually

1:03:38

happening in the person and so it was way too preliminary to start adding other stuff that would just

1:03:44

muddy that question because I thought until I understood that question I couldn’t even understand then what the experience how the experience had

1:03:51

changed with the addition of that adaptation um so that’s my first response but the

1:03:57

question presents itself presented it’s absolutely presented itself too absolutely yes

1:04:03

other comments [Laughter]

1:04:09

go ahead yeah um

1:04:16

I’m gonna say that I uh a system I I did not build but worked

1:04:21

closely with uh was [Music] um

1:04:27

using computer vision in order to to detect trajectories of movement throughout an environment but then it

1:04:34

was incorporate it was it was generating uh flute music uh for uh uh dancers

1:04:42

improvising and there was a lot of breath built into that system so there was this embodied

1:04:49

um kind of anticipatory cues so that so that the performers had a sense of the

1:04:55

computer you know not just making seeing something making a direct correlation yes yes there was a much more complex

1:05:03

relationship that was kind of body oriented um which I’ll just say playing with that

1:05:10

was really uh so the system had a different Readiness that was adapting and changing over time

1:05:19

which often with those kinds of systems when you don’t have those embodied cues it’s always a little bit of a shock to

1:05:24

be of what’s going to happen next and you’re trying to predict something that you don’t know at all so this system was

1:05:30

very different in that you’re you’re a personal embodied Readiness was engaged and that you could you could understand

1:05:37

you knew what kind of like what the length of the phrase was going to be and that was a very different organic

1:05:44

experience of of playing and feeling like you were a little bit more in control of of

1:05:51

how you could respond and engage with a system it was fascinating

1:05:58

um so so haptic field is an absolutely fixed composition right it’s timed

1:06:04

it has to be precise because of the certain temporal relations that Dave was talking

1:06:09

about earlier in terms of our own perception um if if and maybe Sophia will talk

1:06:15

about we’ve done another project that involves actually real-time machine learning if for instance the environment

1:06:20

was controlled by some kind of algorithm machine learning algorithm that takes in data and then try to produce behaviors

1:06:27

based on it with a lighter sound you wouldn’t know the difference as an audience you know it just doesn’t matter

1:06:32

in some ways um for the way we would use that you know so at the same time you’re very

1:06:38

aware that in happy field you’re inside an environment which is not human in the

1:06:44

sense that it’s orchestrated by machines okay um and so you feel part of that

1:06:53

technical milieu you know you feel that you are part of it you are not outside of it the technology is not over there

1:06:59

and you’re over here you know so it’s it’s much more of a kind of diffuse we

1:07:05

say diffusion you know like a kind of uh particulate in the sense of like Haze in

1:07:10

a room where your bodies are really kind of linked with this other this in this

1:07:16

environment you know the environment is human and it’s also technical you know and and and so in some ways it prepares

1:07:23

one for as we get more and more having the sense of diffuse technology out in

1:07:29

the world that we enhance habit that we have to start to understand that

1:07:35

those technical others are actually Us in some ways you know so

1:07:41

I mean I I often think I often think of of uh you know artists setting up these rehearsals you know it’s one of our

1:07:48

roles I think especially in this domain in the in the technological domain that you set up ways for people to you know

1:07:55

address something sense something that maybe they can put language to I mean that becomes you know yeah you know it’s

1:08:03

it in the moment of experience it’s very difficult to put language through something you know because especially

1:08:10

the kinds of projects we’re looking at where you’re you’re trying to Grapple with what’s happening yeah what’s

1:08:15

happening in the world it’s amazing I think I think it’s important to note the

1:08:21

role of vulnerability in these projects and that’s one of the other things that gives me pause in relationship to

1:08:27

applying a lot of machine learning to it because the obvious thing when you take an intense feedback loop if you add a

1:08:34

very disciplined mechanism that’s very good at at detecting modeling Nuance into

1:08:42

that feedback loop the potentials for for rigorous control or astonishing I

1:08:48

mean you know pleasure feedback loops A system that adapts to what you clearly

1:08:53

want to have happen you know it’s control it’s it’s it’s feedback to you

1:09:00

to maximize the time you spend there or the maximize you it’s not very hard to

1:09:05

imagine using a system to guide movement quite specifically and politically I

1:09:11

find that very problematic yeah that’s that’s the way we’re talking about this is very old and you’ve brought it up

1:09:19

Chris it’s an old favorite top of mine in a way we want but we’re drawn to that we you know it’s kind of it’s really

1:09:24

pleasurable to Lose Yourself right so well yes but but the difference is I

1:09:30

mean I think it wasn’t it’s certainly an intention in very nervous system and certainly intention in haptic fields and

1:09:35

perhaps and something that’s implicit in some of your work that losing oneself is a goal but it implies a vulnerability

1:09:43

and when the system is static and you can get to know it and you come to a

1:09:48

point of trust when however that’s established however the artist has established a willingness to expose

1:09:55

yourself right the there’s a danger then then okay so

1:10:00

now I will take the fact that you’ve granted me that vulnerability and I will take it somewhere else it’s a very it

1:10:05

goes of course it’s I mean it’s fascinating the idea of of then adding a very a very articulate Learning System

1:10:13

into the system into that scenario and it would be very pleasurable you know

1:10:19

but you know there’s a challenge with infinite pleasure right I mean I mean even

1:10:25

talking about the the generative role of frustration well we can remove frustration

1:10:31

right we can we can engineer it away is that what should happen I remember a

1:10:37

piece that a group of granular synthesis that I saw a good 10 years ago at least where you went into this closed space

1:10:43

and the medical you know the medical teams were were stationed outside the door you know because the the intention

1:10:51

was an experience so intense you know I had to be I had to be locked to a guide I wouldn’t I wouldn’t do it but yeah so

1:10:58

people have people have played with that I don’t know I think Chris was up next well and and David I wanted to ask when

1:11:04

you talked a little bit about playing a very nervous system but then having this this opening of awareness and feeling so

1:11:10

connected to your environment and that carrying through once you went out into the world do you feel like you would have been able to achieve that

1:11:16

experience in a way if you hadn’t been vulnerable with the technology

1:11:22

um well I said there’s that’s a good question and I think there are two ways two parts

1:11:28

of that question would I have been able to have the experience if I hadn’t become vulnerable with technology I I think any opening of your awareness

1:11:35

involves vulnerability because you’re moving away from familiar space so unless there was some willing to to do

1:11:40

that I wouldn’t I would go back to my habitual experience of the exterior space the other question is why does

1:11:45

this take technology to do that and the answer is it doesn’t but um I I found it interesting to be in a

1:11:53

city on a busy like living off a busy City street in a downtown core and

1:11:59

um jittering generating a kind of awareness that may be more likely to happen after 24 hours of walking up

1:12:05

hiking in the woods or something just saying okay so so how can I use the very technology that creates the tumult

1:12:11

around me and turn it upside down because I’m a bit of a contrarian I’m always looking to turn these things upside down can I use the technology to

1:12:16

to to to to take me back through a series of sort of

1:12:23

um I don’t know what to some other state that it would not normally be used to generate

1:12:28

yeah it’s interesting so there’s a the the French philosopher Michelle Foucault talks about this term technology and he

1:12:36

has a very unusual definition of Technology he calls it technology as a means of governing governance it’s a

1:12:41

strategy for governance meaning well it so there’s an external understanding of that like you know the the the the the

1:12:48

state governs our actions or but that he also says that technology is a means of

1:12:53

self-governance meaning that we govern ourselves and what does that mean well it means that we internalize these

1:13:00

exterior structures and we start acting and governing our behavior in certain

1:13:06

ways and he becomes interested in what he calls Technologies of self of the self you know and the technology of the

1:13:12

self or how do we shape ourselves so we become either uh we we achieve ecstasy

1:13:18

or immortality or or some form of extreme emotion

1:13:24

um you know to do that and and we’re doing that now all the time we’re actually shaping our Behavior based on

1:13:30

what the exterior systems tell us but we don’t even have to look at them we just kind of oh I I’m supposed to move this

1:13:37

way because my Fitbit has told me to act this way and so I start reshaping my behavior based on just the kind of

1:13:43

prompt you know as opposed to waiting for exterior kind of control you know so

1:13:48

this is very interesting the standard but control that there’s an exterior system but at the same time then one starts to adapt one’s Behavior to how

1:13:54

one thinks one should behave according to that exterior system I think having said what I’ve said there’s an inverse

1:14:00

and I think it’s sort of conjured up a bit by some of the things that you said Kristen about using systems to change

1:14:07

one’s assumptions about what movement might be and to kind of push beyond the limits of what we would naturally do as

1:14:13

a human being so it’s not not a question of being too tied to a traditional notion of what

1:14:19

the body might do um some it is you know one can imagine a machine Learning System that that is a

1:14:25

profound corrective for a a real problem emotional or physical that we have

1:14:30

it is however you know and that’s fantastic but it it is it is tricky

1:14:36

territory given the political media environment that we live in yeah

1:14:42

well I’m going to do one more question before we throw it out and that is sort of elicited by your presentation Chris

1:14:48

and that is do you do you do you all feel um a pressure I guess from the

1:14:56

entertainment world with regards to how you work or does it have no impact on

1:15:01

you I’m not suggesting that you you know feel driven by the fact that you know what are they called again Dreamscape

1:15:08

Etc aliens your Dreamscape yeah uh so that’s a super interesting question because now

1:15:14

I’ve been approached by some companies in Quebec to because of haptic feel that oh we want to you know we want to do that we want to mix VR and Mr and and

1:15:22

this real physical thing and you know so in fact uh the line gets less and less

1:15:28

clear between especially when one deals with experience so you know this term experience John Dewey the American

1:15:35

philosopher and educator wrote a book in the 1930s called Art as experience and

1:15:40

when she said oh actually the artworks are not about this exterior thing over there it’s about how we as human beings

1:15:48

enter into the work and produce meaning out of it through our own through the

1:15:54

non-separability of us and the work you know and this is uh there was an article

1:15:59

in New York Times a few years ago about when the um we controllers came out with

1:16:05

you know Wireless accelerometers and where this this uh author said wow I really feel that games are no longer

1:16:10

about something out there but my experience you know and so the term experience has become I mean there’s a

1:16:17

whole book you know called the experienced economy from these two Harvard Business yeah yeah experiences that experience

1:16:23

has become the kind of new mode in capitalism to to and the senses as well

1:16:29

you know um and so it’s a very it’s just like the machine learning thing it’s a very very

1:16:34

tricky territory because what what the reason I showed this alien zoo and then haptic field is they’re actually very

1:16:41

different understandings of experience one gives you everything and then you feel oh my God I touched the wet nose of

1:16:47

the giraffe or whatever and happy fields that doesn’t give you that much so you’re falling back on your own

1:16:53

experience and you go through all these stages between some people will say oh I’m bored and then I’m ecstatic I’m full

1:16:59

of some people fall asleep and it’s this completely strange thing because that’s not how you’re supposed to behave in an

1:17:05

artwork right supposed to be like focus and you look at the thing and then look at the next thing and you know and it’s good for you you know it’s a classic

1:17:11

kind of edu art is supposed to be good at cultural stuff you know experience That’s Entertainment that’s like

1:17:17

frivolous you know um so I think the line is gets more and more blurred also using kind of off the

1:17:24

shelf you know whether it’s well anything we probably all use connects you know they’re just they’re just so handy

1:17:30

okay okay uh or AI off the shelf you know it could be anything right that we

1:17:36

we grab so that’s also I guess a facet of it and then the other part of it is

1:17:42

um a kind of pressure I suppose from being researchers uh you know it’s kind

1:17:48

of the opposite end from entertainment but still there’s a sort of pressure I find even through through that that uh

1:17:55

research agenda to know about entertainment and to situate yourself

1:18:00

you know these would be what’s like really happening in the world you know

1:18:05

as opposed to our kind of yeah end of it yeah I don’t I have had companies come

1:18:11

to me at various times over my career and I tend to have I have a very visceral problematic anti-trapreneurial Instinct

1:18:18

and I tend to go all flaky at the moments when I get these questions also that was my response to the defense

1:18:24

department too when they came to me in the early 80s of the mid 80s

1:18:29

a big mistake or the best thing I ever did I’m not sure but uh

1:18:35

um uh uh there there’s a there

1:18:40

I think a really important distinction is as Chris said the not supplying

1:18:45

everything and right foundationally from the beginning before I did very nervous system my interest in interactivity was

1:18:52

not about creating devices that gave you everything it was about creating ways of creating emptinesses so as an artist I

1:18:59

create resonant emptiness I create spaces where things can happen and so I’m trying to reduce but make places

1:19:07

that like the inside of guitar a guitar sound is made by the empty space inside it so that is my job

1:19:14

and and that doesn’t never seems to be the job of Disney right

1:19:19

it again has to do with yeah with the level of of control because Disney in

1:19:26

order for a Disney Experience to work every single aspect of how you respond to it has to be absolutely controlled

1:19:33

from the moment you the music to how you move and that’s why it’s called imagineering right

1:19:41

um and and and and and here there’s gaps in these works so they don’t give you

1:19:46

everything you know and so you’re you’re having to make up the story and so it’s interesting when you talk about narratives like these these people in

1:19:53

Quebec were saying to me how is it possible to keep people an hour in this space without a story

1:20:00

I said well you people are making up stories that are much more interesting than stories you can make up

1:20:06

you know I mean but the thing about research is really interesting because again it’s a very slippery slope so the

1:20:14

the CTO the two ctOS of this Dreamscape uh interactive or an immersive company

1:20:20

are two computer scientists from Switzerland who run a non-profit organization called Art NM who designed

1:20:26

this technology and and and so that that it’s just like Jeffrey Hinton and and

1:20:32

and uh all of these uh researchers who develop machine learning and deep learning and artificial in order working

1:20:39

for Google and Facebook now you know um so it that line is also very very gets more and more blurred you know and

1:20:46

capitalism wants it blurred you know so research is really good because it will build the next tools that we’ll make

1:20:53

um you know we’ll go public and and make someone a billion dollars

1:20:59

something to say I mean it’s I’m agreeing with all of this and and I feel like you know artists

1:21:05

you know traditionally are very good at leaving those spaces to explore and you know directed a lot of this work as well

1:21:11

with defamiliarization and creating performances that enabled people to make you know to try and engage and

1:21:17

understand what was happening and you know theater spaces would be super industrial and and bare and you’re you

1:21:23

know you’re imagining what the surroundings could be and and it’s that pulling back away from what you’re used

1:21:31

to seeing um that engages you to use your imagination and I keep thinking a little

1:21:37

bit about um interactive uh film and then like that work has been happening forever but

1:21:43

you know the first piece has come to Netflix within the last few months of is where you can you know click your way

1:21:50

through a Choose Your Own Story but again it’s completely controlled there’s no there’s no Randomness there’s no

1:21:55

generation there’s nothing no space it couldn’t be control this is the history of it too because this is all

1:22:02

new yeah you know so you’re in a new world you know ignoring the fact that it’s actually not yeah and and anytime

1:22:10

that there’s some interactive work and not even interactive we’ll just say media work included in like

1:22:16

Galas and and Academy Award ceremonies and things where there’s projections on someone’s dress there’s no way for them

1:22:24

to to robustly control anything interactive like everything is is done

1:22:29

in a very pristine precise way that cannot be messed up um

1:22:34

and I feel like even even contemporary Theater now is still you know you still need that stage manager to be able to

1:22:41

control all the pieces in order for everything to move smoothly um and it’s hard to to find places that

1:22:48

are going to be accepting of accidents that word control is really key to me

1:22:54

the Technologies they use are all about control they’re designed for control they’re exquisitely good at controlling

1:23:00

and some of us are perversely drawn to find ways to use those to do the

1:23:06

opposite to create spaces where it which are not about control and on a philosophical level it’s almost

1:23:12

like for me it’s an attempt to understand is there any hope for our culture like can we take these things which are invading our culture can we

1:23:20

also use them for something other than their most obvious intentional use and I

1:23:25

think if we can’t find Alternatives we’re toast and we have to keep pushing these the other than obvious narrative

1:23:32

that the or agenda that the machines buy their very nature will put forward and

1:23:38

when we think about then machine learning which is incredibly good at at absorbing

1:23:46

um a data set and and giving you some sense of it it’s not clear yet exactly how to use that to to let go

1:23:55

like it’s it’s very good it’s a beautiful incredible about how good it is at at finding nuance and stuff like

1:24:01

that but so but but so many artists I know who are used deep in the machine learning they’re still going I have no

1:24:06

idea how to use this as for art no idea [Applause]

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