ICC
[NTT/InterCommunication 95]

[Telematics Peformance]

Telematics
Paul SERMON

"Telematic Dreaming" is an installation that exists within the ISDN telephone network. Two individual interfaces are located in separate locations, these interfaces in themselves are dynamic installation systems that function as customized video conferencing units. Double beds are positioned within both locations, one site is blacked out, the other illuminated. The bed in the light space has a camera situated directly above it, sending a live video image of the bed and a viewer/user laying on it, to a video projector located above the other bed in the blacked out room. The live video image is projected down onto the bed with another person laying on it. A second camera, next to the video projector, sends a live video image of the projection on the bed back to a series of monitors that surround the bed in the illuminated location. Quite simply, the telepresent image functions like a mirror that reflects one person within another person's reflection. "Telematic Dreaming" deliberately plays with the ambiguous connotations of a bed as a telepresent projection surface. The psychological complexity of the object dissolves the geographical distance and technology involved in the complete ISDN installation. The ability to exist outside of the user's own space and time is created by an alarmingly real sense of touch that is enhanced by the context of the bed and caused by an acute shift of senses in this telematic space. The user's consciousness is within the telepresent body controlled by a voyeurism of its self. The cause and effect interactions of the body determine its own space and time, by extending this through the ISDN fiber optic network, the body can travel at the speed of light and locate itself wherever it is interacting. In "Telematic Dreaming" the two users exchange their tactile senses and touch each other by replacing their hands with their eyes.

The success of "Telematic Dreaming" introduced me to Jeffrey SHAW from The Center for Art and Media Technology Karlsruhe (ZKM), Germany. SHAW later invited me to become an Artist in Residence at the ZKM, to research and produce a new telematic installation for the "ZKM冤ultiMediale 3" in November 1993. It was my intention not to deviate too far from "Telematic Dreaming," to produce a work that was very similar in its technique and form.
SPIRAL
[SPIRAL]
[SPIRAL]
NTT/ICC Gallery
[NTT/ICC Gallery]
[NTT/ICC Gallery]
"Telematic Vision" is an installation that exists within a telepresent space, located between two large blue sofas that are geographically separated. A video camera, situated directly in front of one sofa, sends a live image, of a viewer/user sitting on it, to a chroma-key "blue-box" video mixer. Another camera situated in front of the other sofa sends an image of the second sofa and another person to the same video mixer. The two sofa images are mixed together, putting the two dispersed viewers/users together on the same sofa and telepresent screen. The combined image is finally fed to a series of monitors that surround each sofa, making it possible to control the body at a distance from all angles around each sofa. In many ways the sofa and the bed amount to much the same thing, they can transform themselves into each other, as a "sofa/bed." The semiology of the bed, that proved to be so effective in "Telematic Dreaming," is also present within the sofa and is equally as effective. Where "Telematic Vision" and its sofa differ from "Telematic Dreaming" and its bed, is in the scenario and theater of its spectacle. The sofa finds itself between the bed and the television, whilst it retains the semiotic reference to the bed, it also refers directly to television. The television and sofa are caught up in an inseparable scenario. In "Telematic Vision" the sofa is the seat from which the spectacle of television is viewed, and the only spectacle that is viewed is the audience who sit on the sofa.

In both works, "Telematic Dreaming and "Telematic Vision," the viewers/users can only communicate by visual gestures, vocal contact is not possible. They have to adopt the role of silent performers, without them the installations are only vacant spaces of melodramatic potential. As an artist I provide the context, I design the dynamics of the system around an object of psychological complexity, such as a bed or a sofa. For this reason, the work is extremely intense, and audiences are sometimes reluctant to take up the role of the performer. This is usually because they are initially concerned about performing in front of an audience. However, once the viewer takes on the role of the performer they lose contact with the audience and discover that the actual performance is taking place within the telematic space, and not on the bed or sofa. The performers lose consciousness of the embarrassing situation they had previously assumed and become the user. They do not notice that the local body is moving in local space, they are only aware of the distant body interacting in telematic space. A new heightened perception of the self is developed. The performer's actual body can only be viewed from within, whereas the user's telepresent body can be viewed from afar. Bringing your self back to your actual body is as hard as getting your self onto the bed or sofa in the first place, and being able to communicate in the actual space and the telematic space simultaneously is almost impossible. "Telematic Dreaming" and "Telematic Vision" can clarify that my body is wherever it is interacting, and that it can interact wherever I choose to telepresent it.

A Topology of Body and Space
KUSAHARA Machiko
(Writer and Curator in Media Art)

Is the body capable of being transported via computer communications? At what level of existence can we sense the reality of the virtual body lying around or sitting in virtual space?

At this point, I believe we have begun to embrace doubts about virtual space, which is thoroughly dominated by the visual, and electronic space, which overflows with ambiguous signs and filmic images. Multimedia should enable us to manipulate filmic images, text and sound on our own. Virtual reality still mostly relies on the visual senses (and in a highly dissatisfactory state, at this point). Both are engaged in an attempt to mount a communications system in which we cannot even send visual images at a satisfactory speed, and they are still a far cry from the claims they advertise. It is surely distrust of the membrane of the substance-less visual imagery created by electronic signals that has precipitated a nearly abnormal rise in the interest in skin and corpses, as well as the desire to return to a material physicality of body. Within this context, if we are to question the meaning of the body in relation to virtual space, is it possible to demonstrate anything more than a simple transposition of sensory facultiesムspecifically, the replacement of the sense of touch with that of sight?

The video conference system is a mechanism that symbolizes business in an information society. Yet in the hands of Paul SERMON, this mechanism becomes a highly paradoxical matter. In SERMON's work, instead of using a non-existent shared space for the practical purposes of business talks, primitive forms of communication or desire, such as non-verbal gesture and bodily contact, temporarily and ambiguously create intimate, personal and risky relations between complete strangers. Selection of the other party is nearly impossible here. The thrilling relationship with the person on the other end, materially close yet far, and most likely someone who one will never actually meet, lasts only during the interval of the performance. It is as though this performance has opened a small hole in the space of daily life and joined the gap with ISDN links.

The overlapping of the familiar sight of the TV monitor with reality deconstructs the meanings held by these everyday landscapes. In "Telematic Vision," the "couch potato" state of sitting alone in front of a TV set and staring at the screen is transformed into a scene likely to appear in an old American home dramaムthat of an affectionate couple or a happy family, seated on a sofa of classic design, watching TV together. And yet, the tele-conference system which plays out nostalgic scenes of "sweet home" is both a tool of businessムthe diametrical opposite of familyムand a member of the same class as the TV game, which invested the TV monitor with a different meaning and drove scenes of family togetherness into extinction.

Within this series of works that employ the tele-conference mechanism (including "The Telematic Sénce"), "Telematic Dreaming" surely has the most powerful impact because of the dissimilating effect of the bed, a sign shared by everyone. By putting audience participants in that familiar situation from TV drama of getting into bed with someone one has just met, this work drives one, or the member of the audience before oneユs eyes (the performer), into a state of bewilderment. Members of the audience are placed in the positions of the actor who plays out a bed scene on stage or before a camera, or the voyeur who peeps in on the acts of others. This is a secret act taking place in a public space, and that public space is a virtual space that does not exist in reality. Furthermore, despite the fact that the body is the only means of communication therein, the body of the other party is ghost-like, without substance. This contradictory situation not only confounds the audience, but also, after first releasing them from the logic and restrictions of daily life and dismantling the various elements of signatory identity and the biological environment of the body, it enables experimentation with and enjoyment of the role the body plays in communication. The virtuality of the space enables it to maintain both theatricality and the context of daily life at the same time.

Postscript
Paul SERMON

I am always reluctant to perform within my installation "Telematic Dreaming." It gives me far greater pleasure to witness the public experience of it. This is not because I am tired of the performance aspect, but there is only a certain amount that is actually possible in public spaces such as galleries and exhibition halls. Each person brings a new idea and generates a new atmosphere within it. The first five minutes are always the most curiousムwatching the public as they learn and understand exactly what is possible. The actual reason I make performances is only because the audience are sometimes too shy and embarrassed to try it themselves, this is more often than not the caseムthe bed is an extremely private and intimate space. I therefore see my function more as a presenter or teacher than a performer. When making performances I always stop when a large crowd gathers around the bed, I ask if somebody from the audience would like to give it a try. I do this because there is always something new for me to learn that I can not teach. Particularly so when working in countries such as Japan.

The two Japanese art students, TAKEDA Sonoko and KASUGA Akira, who worked with me communicated great sensitivity and established a relationship that was like a choreographed dance routine. They got so into the installation that it was hard to pull them away. Once you are over the first five minutes and the initial learning proccess is done, you begin to orientate yourself within the telematic space. The embarrassment fades. This of course requires a lot of concentration to understand your body from a different view and in a different space. Once you are on the bed, it can be as difficult to leave as it was to enter itムregaining your original perception of yourself.

"Telematic Vision" never requires a performance because it's a sofa. The public are far more at ease with this space. It was this installation that really gave me the idea to leave out the performance role in "Telematic Dreaming." It worked much better without me, and I learnt so much more from public users that I decided to do the same with the bed-which is not easy. Ever since I began telematic projects in 1992, I have been making recordings of my own private and, more importantly, public performances. I now have a cupboard full of tapes from every exhibition that I have made for the time being, it is only my personal archive, maybe I will make a show of them some time.