ARTISTS TALKING

# 41 [11 August 2009]

its hitting 9pm - still working. Gordon couldn't deliver the screens so I have mocked up some ones so when they come tomorrow it won't take long to install. The open exhibition period came and went pretty quickly. We have the computer running two screens. This is great, as the guy at the mac store told me that this wasn't possible - the graphics card wouldn't be able to handle it. The resolution is OK - I still haven't worked out how this is working with the camera, but anyway, a great progression.

I don't like the fact that the pixy asks you to be outside of the room to interact with it - or to find its viewing spot. At the same time, I hate the way my computer is sitting in front of the screen - people become so aware of it and then forget about the screen. Tomorrow we will fine tune it again - get the systems outside of the room - so we can still control it - but don't have everyone looking at it. This will be a good step forward.

For the current version of the Chameleon Project the work demands that you  stand infront of the mind reader for it to work - I don't think this works with Pixy - I am wondering if a small change of narrative can happen. for example - the character stays walking back and forth until you engage with it - and then the face comes clearer - this allows people to walk around the room more. I will ask jeff about it tonight.

I haven't heard from Rana, Youssef or Abdehlrahmen about the crashes, Jeff Mann who has developed the video engine has said its not on his end. Tomorrow I will test it with the old version of the face reader and see what happens. 

Kim from the UCL interaction lab arrived today. I have been trying to gather participants for the evaluation. Today we gathered another three or four. It make take longer. Thank god we didn't start it yesterday.

Michael Roy seems to have the better luminosity sorted out now. Natacha has been spending the day getting the next pixy display together. This one is going to be hung as a curtain. I was hoping it may have been hung as a curve, but this can't happen which is ashame. Anyway, the next one should be up tomorrow.

I have asked jeff to make the pixy be driven by the one computer. We need some more computers now - but it takes time to set them up and I sort of need Jeff to do that.

We are using a new camera that seems to respond better to the infra-red - but doesn't seem to latch onto your face as easy as the other one. The logitech one didn't work anymore. Michael from fabrica tried pulling out the infra-red sheild - and it didn't work. strange. 

# 42 [12 August 2009]

Conner - 16 years old, spent last week work on the project

Saturday 1st August:

Today there was an artist talk at the Lighthouse Arts Gallery in the Digital Lounge. The talk lasted for around 1hr 20mins and consisted of the artist,Tina Gonsalves, talking about the  history of Chameleon Project and where it is today. Tina was joined by some 'Specialists', one of whom was Natacha who is from the Experimente Electricae Programme in France.

Monday 3rd - Wednesday 5th August:

During this time, I washelping Natacha from Experimente Electricae build her 3D 'PIXY' screen that the Chameleon Project is being shown on. This ment that I was doing all sorts of different things from glueing the pixels onto wood so that they could be hung from the ceiling and and also wiring the pixels together to be placed on the wood. I even made a pixel line near enough from scratch which allowed me to see how the pixels are put together.

Michael, from Experimente Electricae, was at Lighthouse on the Tuesday and Wednesday and he was the person who built the circuit board that will allow the 'PIXY SCREEN' to work. I also done an Hours worth of transcribing for Tina but only managed to get through 3 minutes of the tape. All in all, for my first experience, working with digital artist was interesting and fun as everyone was kind and I'd like to thank them all for allowing me to help out, so THANKYOU everyone, especially Gen, who was the experience host and the Head Co-ordinator at Lighthouse.

# 43 [14 August 2009]

Dr Karl Broome Is currently a research fellow in the sociology department working on the project 'Supporting Shy Users in Pervasive Computing'. He has been at Lighthouse over the last ten days - helping, writing notes -

 “Oh, oh. Is it on? I am not being filmed am I?” The man seems to beconcerned with whether or not his face, and more importantly his facial expressions are being recorded. Our core five facial muscles work throughout the day expressing emotions; concurrently others are constantly reading our facial expressions.  Numerous people have come forward to allow Tina to film them expressing a broad range of emotions in front of the camera. As Tina has commented, this is literally an intensively ‘emotional’ experience with the process often resulting in those being filmed breaking down in tears. A very intimate and moving process for all involved, and Tina is aware of her privilege in going through these very personal journeys with her participants, who she has acknowledged have revealed very personal and precious information to her. Visitors to the Chameleon exhibit have frequently asked if it is their own face displayed on Pixy. Despite not being able to recognise whether or not it is actually their face,  discovering whether it is in fact their face seems to make a considerable difference to how they experience the ‘image’, and perhaps more importantly how they think others may experience the image. Maybe the experience of being 'read', and thus presented back through Chameleon, inaugurates a new moment in the experience of 'myself as other' (see Celia Lury’s ‘Prosthetic Culture’). In some sense, the concern exhibited by visitors maybe the thought that Chameleon has potentially taken something profoundly personal and defining of the individual: their emotional self and made it ‘public’. Where as a photo image, or a film can be taken to retain the 'visible' surface expressions of ‘self’, Chameleon through reading these expression probes even more deeper, and understood as revealing more deeper thoughts and feelings. Is there a fear that the 'mind reader' technology has the power to reveal the 'truth' of who we are – how we feel 'inside'?  Thus make publicly available our neuroses, reveal our 'inner demons', warts and all? Or maybe still, make public that which we are unaware, something like our 'unconscious' selves. In a sense, the emotional dialogue afforded by Chameleon shows “look what my emotions and feelings do to other people”. The video in front of us becomes a reverberation of ourselves, we feel 'I am responsible for this' – ‘I am driving this’. If we choose to 'interact' with Chameleon, we have little scope for strategically controlling the reception of our mediated self-presentation, and its subsequent reverberations.  According to Baudrillard, we now exist in culture where we live as if we have a video recorder in our heads:  we are always transforming ourselves in anticipation of what we might look like as an image (Lury 1998:78). Perhaps it is this heightened self-awareness, and anticipation of ourselves, or of visual emotional response attributed to our ‘selves’ being made a ‘image’ that makes people feel more comfortable in interacting with the Pixy than interacting directly with the face reading software for any length of time.

# 44 [14 August 2009]

I haven’t written over the last couple of days because my time has been so stretched, and my thoughts are so embedded and confused that I haven’t been able to talk about approach, nothing seems too clear right now.  Its been busy, bus, busy over this residency – and now I need time out to reflect -  more in reflecting than doing. My thoughts are scattered, trying to reflect - and the reflection is at a space that I still haven’t been able to translate into words. But now, I guess I will try. Start thinking about what has happened over the last ten days.

I have shot 5 different portraits, each a really amazing journey of attempting to read people, give and take. I have enjoyed the journey, the people have given and shared and often exposed a lot. I then have sat and analyzed and categorized that footage – more as looking at narrative and science of what an emotion is.  This process has felt harsh – as if I am fragmenting a lovely relationship, objectifying it, making it into a production.

Over the Lighthouse Residency I have been developing new ways of looking a displaying video, both with the pixy project and experiential electricae with the rapid prototyping group at Solent Universiy.

Over the last couple of days I have tried to understand pixy and how it reveals and image, and what images may break through the challenges of the pixy display. Last week I tried shooting for Pixy, concentrating on voice and movement. Much of that didn’t work at all. We worked out the screen liked closeness of the face, really cropped in – it liked a sort of swaying movement in order to capture glimpses of a face. I created many different video tracks to put through – few worked. Pixy likes great lighting and my recent video portraits have been shot in a studio with one light – I decided to be more adaptable and respond to content and not be so focused on the technicalities of lighting. In the end we were down to two men – one called Kevin and the other Simon. Not particularly long portraits – they repeat themselves pretty quickly. I have a bout 35 portraits now. Some of these are a few hours long.

# 45 [14 August 2009]

Experential Electricae’s Pixy display is gorgeous in the dark. We enter a nearly black room. We get stuck looking at fluttering pixels, at a part of the room they make sense reading a face, on the other side of the room, we just see flickering pixels. It feels like a digital forest.

I love seeing people’s faces when the image reveals itself to them – and they ‘get it’. However, the contagion aspect I was hoping to explore seems to not work. When we look at Pixy, we are more ‘perplexed’ than any thing else. We are trying to work out what is going on - I was hoping the screen may reveal and more visceral bodily response. When I look at it 'i feel in my head' more than my body.

The sound track gives us more information about emotion, but there is a disconnect. I wonder with pixy if you need more ambient sound? People think Pixy is a sound spectrograph or something.  Some people sit in front of it for ages and don’t see anything. Their face reveals more confusion than anything else. Again, confusion is not something I am exploring for this project.

For Chameleon we introduced a lot more pixels for legibility of image with in Pixy. But other than that, we didn’t experiment much with the hanging of the screen. Maybe we needed four weeks and not two? A lot of building was done, leaving little time to try and work out what else we could do with Pixy to suit the Chameleon content? I know Michael loves to see the faces on Pixy, I sense natacha has enjoyed it too, but there is still a disconnect. I think we needed to shape the display to the project look at the display from all sides. Also, the current interaction of Chameleon demands that you drive it - This definitely doesn't work for Pixy - in my ultimate pixy we would walk through it, as if entering the body of emotions, and they would be fluttering around it. We see it from all angles.

On Wednesday Helen Sloan came in, as well as Matthew Miller and Micahel Maydon from Fabrica. We look at both iterations of the work. Helen walks into the room with the screens we have built with Gordon from Solent University - she loves they way they have revealed and shown faces - that you can see one side clear and the over more ambiguous. She then walks into pixy and she sees a completely different rendering of the same project. But this one is more 

I need to arrive at a decision of how to progress with these iterations.

# 46 [14 August 2009]

I first met Experential Electricae at the Liminal Screens residency at the banff new media institute in Canada. They had built Pixy in the constraints of a basement in banff. The problems of finding space and hanging in banff lead the screen to be more volumetric. Natacha, presented Pixy as "conceived for both it's own use and collaboration with other video artists who would create other content for the object or even live performance". This intrigued me. A lot of artist and technologists are creating 'tools' for other artists to then appropriate. Does this really work? I was both interested in the screen and also interested in this nature of collaboration. In April I  first contacted Experential Electricae about becoming involved with the chameleon Project. We then met briefly in Vienna where I was delivering a talk about the Chameleon Project.

While trying to understand where we have come to with Pixy, I have looked back on the dialogue we have had together about Chameleon and Pixy coming together. This is an extract of the first email ever sent to Natacha regarding Pixy, and how it may work with the Chameleon Project. I looked at the screen yesterday and thought about how it had developed for the Chameleon Project.

“Interestingly I don't think the low resolution would affect the emotional reading of the piece. Neuroscientific research has done tests on how much information you can take from an image of a face, and still read the emotional tone of the face. Its amazing how much tonal range you can take away. 

 I proposed  to create a screen that hangs from the middle of the room. You can see four different faces - one to the north. south, east, west. Their is mind reading technology that interacts with the viewer. The face in the video responds to the emotional expression of the viewer and tries to begin a dialogue with them. If you walk through the screens (into the mind of the work), the screen will react as well. Maybe getting annoyed or something.

 A lot of what i am trying to say in this work is about the delicate nature of our inner and outer world, and how we are constantly adjusting to what is around us. I like the delicate nature of your screens- and the fact that you don't know where the sort of begin and end. They are not 'contained', much like our emotions - always a bit leaky and prone to infection. The lovely messy bits that make us human, and that technology loves to deny.

 It would be a great collaboration, and interesting for the space. It would probably require a grant to be written to develop the screen a bit more to work in four dimensions and to install it. Who is developing this work? Is it Michel or you? I remember you mentioning you were working with another artist as well.

 what do you think? I think it would be great'.

# 47 [14 August 2009]

I came to a conclusion yesterday that we shouldn't progress with Pixy with the Chameleon Project. It wasn't a light decision, I hardly slept at all. Primarily, I think I was anxious about the nature of the collaboration, and about how much we could adapt Pixy to work with Chameleon. I was anxious about delivering the project on time.  I was anxious about having very limited video to work with, I was concerned about too much complication, and how Pixy brings  a very different reading of the work. If we hung Pixy as a display for Chameleon, I would have wanted it to investigate emotional contagion, and Natacha told me that she didn't think it was about emotional contagion anymore. I guess alarm bells went off, and I started to retreat away from the development of Pixy and Chameleon. I wanted it to be the meeting of two great projects, and I wonder if it ended up competing more than anything else? Pixy bought a very different reading of Chameleon, and maybe one that I felt might have been to confusing. I was also aware that both Pixy and Chameleon are quite innovative in their nature, and wondered if audiences would ever see past this. My work, although I use technology is about humanity, about visceral responses, about relationships, trust and intimacy. I don't want it to concentrate on Technology. I realised part of the reason that I wanted to explore Pixy was also so Pixy could be seen more by people. Bringing Pixy to Fabrica would have been a great opportunity for Experientiae Electricae. Anyway, I am sure they will get other opportunities in the UK after the Lighthouse residency. Pixy is beautiful.

I talked the decision through with Fabrica, whose main concern is really about what I want to show, as well as what works in the space. The opening at Fabrica is October 2nd, and I always had told Fabrica I would give them a decision by the 12th of August. I sit here now, still feeling confused. Fabrica is a big space with a personality of it own.

I talked it through with Natacha and Michael and they understood. They could see the disconnects that were never truly resolved. We discussed the type of imagery that Natacha might explore with Pixy. Interestingly she wants to explore video's of  'atom bombs'. How very different to my own approach to Pixy.

I feel sad about the potentials that were developing between Pixy and Chameleon - that were never truly resolved.  When I thought about Pixy coming into Chameleon, it took effort - we needed to find somewhere to host a residency, I needed to discuss it with the collaborators, I needed to work out timings, we wrote 3 grants applications and were successful with one Arts council England application. 100's of emails and discussions later. Both Natacha's and my own family up-routed to Brighton... Sleepless nights and hardwork from everyone.  

# 48 [14 August 2009]

And the now we are nearing the end of a residency.  I feel sad that this is the end of something, but also aware that I need a lot of time to reflect about it all. 

Now how to go ahead with Fabrica. We are either talking about a two screen option or six screens.  Micheal and Matthew from Fabrica are heading toward the six screen and Helen is heading toward a two screen version. We are all aware that it opens in six weeks.

For a six to eight screen version to work I need a lot of projectors. I need to work on the interaction. I need to finish the screens with Gordon. Its a major install. I can see Michael is apprehensive of the hang. I am worried that Fabrica is so big it would completely over shadow the work. 

Helen believes the use of the two larger screens rather than several smaller screens will facilitate a more sustained immersive experience for the viewer for several reasons:

The aim will be to have two large screens/projections facing each other across the gallery with the visitor driving the emotional dialogue between the two. During the residency at Lighthouse we have discovered that the camera and other technology necessary for operating ‘mind reader’  have frequently been a source of distraction for visitors, thus preventing a prolonged and immersive experience with Chameleon. The use of two larger screens will demand more sustained attention, and will lead to visitors focusing upon the two screens/film projections for a longer period of time, and therefore enabling a more qualitatively rich experience of emotional contagion.  Importantly allowing visitors greater opportunity to register their own affects upon the exhibit and the overall affective quality of the gallery space. This latter point is of key significance as the exhibit sets  out to foreground emotional contagion for the visitor not only through their interactions with Chameleon, but also through the overall production of a profoundly affective gallery space.  The size of the screens/projections and their capacity to display film at such a scale will be another of way of producing and communicating the affective intensity of the exhibit –the sheer volume of their presence will be emotionally ‘demanding’ and hopefully overwhelming to the extent that in this context the technology itself takes second stage.

# 49 [14 August 2009]

JANE MCGRATH  MA DIGITAL MEDIA ARTS

My experience has been very exciting, there is something wonderful about the meeting of many creative minds in one space, the ability to move from room to room and engage in or simply listen in on very exciting convestations.

At moments  these are practcal, relating to producing screens, sizes, cameras and tracking  onto deeper matters of engagement  and interaction ....then back  to the process of rapid prototyping - in its self something that sends my mind into a spin!

Move on and Micahel is sitting in the corner working dilligently on his pixy boards as a scientist who is visiting the work is discussing his theory on how the electrronics are working with his friend .. Carl is discussing the context of the engagement process to The Shyness Project..Tina is introducing new arrivals to the work.

People are engaging both with the work and with each other. There is a dynamic contagious energy that circulates within the space ... just like the  movement  across the Pixy... or  the movement of emotions between screen, software and the viewer -it bursts forward and retracts depending on who is where ...you can almost touch it and feel it... this residency seems to me to be a constant process of becomming - of pushing forward, of change. Not only is the work it self  pushing forward but it is pushing outwards and affecting the visitors.. all of this played out to a sound track of the works pre recorded emotions...laughter and whooping, crying and long bitter accusations. Its a very  emotive space.

So for me the 'experience' starts as soon as you reach the bottom of the stairs and will not end until you  close the main door on the way out.  The emotions are so strong that they can not fail to affect you, your mood can not fail to be changed.

There is definately a move from emotion A to emotion B - I feel that there is a very hoilistic kind of contagion going on. Whether this comes from interaction with the work or interaction with the people or the process  seems somehow irrelevant.

I believe that if you stand back and take a longer perspective on the residency at Lighthouse as a live installation, a piece of work in it self  -  it has the fingerprints of real time emotional contagion all over it.

A case of process immitating art?

# 50 [15 August 2009]

JANE MCGRATH MA DIGITAL MEDIA ARTS

I am participating in the Chameleon project as part of larger research for my MA dissertation. I can see so much potential material in the project, when you explore it on a micro level it’s so  deep  - such a rich area of knowledge embedded in one place. As I am typing away I’m thinking more and more of just how much learning will come out of the project for me.  I am becoming more and more convinced that using just this one  project as a basis for my dissertation question will be enough to write a PHD let alone an MA.  I wasnt expecting that.

Firstly there is the excitement of a live Arts / Science Collaboration – just quickly running through the people whose work I have seen, whom I have personally met or simply heard talk on the project  - Tina,  MIT,  UCL,  Gordon from Solent Rapid Prototyping Lab, neuroscientists,  Carl a sociologist, Helen Soane, Experientae Electricae not forgetting Lighthouse, Fabrica and Incubator. No wonder Im so excited - its like a term of study crammed into two weeks.

Also in view of my personal research I have been involved and so can be subjective as well as objective which is a great.  But I need to keep asking my self  - how does it relate to me question about using new technology  to construct liminal spaces? And where does my question of powerlessness/emowerment  come in, in fact I  keep asking my self  -  does it?

After a really helpful  chat with Carl on the train home, I need to define for me what exactly a liminal space is –I need to (re)read Victor Turner and Van Gennep, I do love the Betwixt and Between notion and the notion of pure potentiality. I find that betwixt and between situated in Tinas work – in human emotion, in technology. The potentiality is an area of further research and Natasha from EE  was explaining to me the Deleuzian concept of potentiality. Very valuable and  helpful.

Carl had a very important question when he asked me how constructing an experience where I wanted to control the outcome of an experience – ie powerlessness – to empowerment could create a liminal space because there was no option for pure potentiality because the outcome was predefined.

Thinking aout loud  I had said that althouh  the destination would be set – ie point A – B  each person would have a different potential subjective experience, a different journey where emotionally and intellectually anything could happen.  That the emotional end point could be a very different experience for the user.

Carl has some excellent advice that was that it would be beneficial to take the meaning of liminality back to its original meaning (Turner, Van Gennep) and use this as the structure on which to base the ‘liminal’ . So much could be seen  as liminal and the question would always be are they ‘truly liminal’ spaces or just thresholds.