EDUARDO KAC

VIDEOTEXT TELEPRESENCE TELECOMMUNICATIONS

NEW INSIGHTS CAN BE GAINED BY EXAMINING ARTWORKS THAT ARE THEMSELVES REAL DIALOGUES…

Digital Artist for over 30 years

Challenged conventions of traditional art world

Constantly exploring new uses for digital media

Helped engineer a number new fields in digital art

…that is, active forms of communication between

two living entities

DIGITAL ART FIELDS

Videotext

Telecommunications

Telerobotics

Telepresence

PARTICIPANT INTERACTION AND COMMUNICATION

Accessible online during

Brazil High-Tech (1986)

Animated Poem

Series of Lines and

Shapes assemble into

letters and then words

Erotic-lyrical statement

Viewer must experience

animation to understand

message behind poem

VIDEOTEXT - TESÃO

Also created in 1986 Features the assemblage

of what appears to be an ordinary UPC barcode

Numbers refer to the date piece was created and uploaded

Letters form the word Deus (God) isolating the eu (Latin for I)

Questions man’s relationship to God, man to consumerism, God to labeling and identity by computer

VIDEOTEXT – D/EU/S

NEW MEDIA ART IS COLLABORATIVE AND INTERACTIVE…

…and abolishes the state of unidirectionality traditionally characteristic

of literature and art.

Telecommunication art refers to works created

with telecommunication equipment

Based on interactions between two or more

people

Recreate the spontaneity of a verbal conversation

Two groups of artists – one in Chicago, the other in Pittsburgh

Images of the artists’ faces transmitted live via slow-scan television

Spontaneous, improvised images reflected the unpredictable nature of conversations

Idea of ‘collective identity’

Visual dialog

TELECOMMUNICATION –INTERFACES (1990)

Kac, as creator, gave up a considerable amount of control over the final object

Information in flux, negotiating meaning between artist and participant, and communication as an experience – all more important than an art object

Visuals merely document the process

TELECOMMUNICATIONINTERFACES

I WANTED TO ENABLE THE PARTICIPANT TO CROSS THE SCREEN…Telepresence art “creates invented worlds populated by imaginary creatures embodied in electronic parts”

Combines visual messaging and bilateral dialog with remote experience and robotics

Participant can experience remote spaces through a different point of view

…and gain a sense of his or her own presence in a remote social

milieu

Began in 1989 in Chicago with hardware engineer Ed Bennett

Developed through 1996, comprising of six telepresence events

Ornitorrinco is Portuguese for “platypus”

Objectives: Create a remote world for participants to explore, imply kinship between animal and robot, and highlight hybridity

TELEPRESENCE – ORNITORRINCO (1989 – 96)

Hybrid between robot and human

Participant remained at one location and remotely controlled robot at a second location

Participants could see the created space from Ornitorrinco’s point of view

Participants had to rethink preconceived notions of scale, spatial relationships, and navigation

TELEPRESENCEORNITORRINCO

ORNITORRINCOSTILL SHOTS

Each person constructs a personal mental image of the space

Mental image is based on the images the participant sees through the robot

Movement is physically real, but the constructed mental image of the space comes from images on screen

The passage between two spaces defines the nature of Telepresence communication

TELEPRESENCEORNITORRINCO

EDUARDO KAC

VIDEOTEXT Experience animated messages

TELECOMMUNICATIONS Bilateral communication

TELEPRESENCE Communication to understand space