ARTDES 130: Re-Mapping Project
Finishing off one of the best classes I’ve taken at Stamps thus far, I knew I had to step up my game in terms of what I have created up to this point. This class in the first place is designed as a perfect way for us to implement everything we learned in our foundation courses and the Re-Mapping project is essentially our “Freshman Year Review.” Our previous two projects, Sequence and Body Extension, are used to create problems that we must solve in new and unpredictable ways. Re-Mapping was designed to use techniques and experience from these projects, plus the aspect of our daily lives, to create a cohesive representation of what we have gained thus far.
During this process, I kept reminding myself of the point of being here at Stamps. I am not bound by any medium or set way of thinking. This school has pushed me far outside my comfort zone, which for me was primarily of a digital interface. The problems Stamps has imposed on me has caused me to create work which, in itself, opens up to additional questions.
Both Sequence and Body Extension have opened my mind as to what art can and should be. In my assessment, it is best at creating new questions that challenge the status quo. I set to do just that in my Re-Mapping project.
Given that this school has opened me up to making more handmade and tangible objects where craftsmanship plays a large role in the successful communication of a piece, I knew there needed to be this element in my project. Additionally, given my prior technological experience, I also felt it was important to implement the use of technology since this shows skills I have obtained both within and beyond the walls of Stamps.
Reiterating my whole point of asking new questions, I wanted to create something that was relatable to everyone, including myself, to spark a conversation about self-reflection and self-evaluation, not only on myself but everyone who encounters my project.
I wanted to create a divide, an interference, between day-to-day conversation and interaction with the outside world. Given that most people today have some sort of an online presence that is used to facilitate full-blown human interactions, I wanted to question the very nature of this and exploit this idea to get people to question why we do this.
To do this, I developed an organic and technological divide. A cardboard housing was crafted to create a physical separation between my head and everyone else's. This cut off a real visual communication between me and the viewer, but with modern digital communication, webcams are often used to simulate a real visual environment. So I recreated what most people would do digitally into this device, and projected a live video feed of my head within the device. Live video of the viewers was also mirrored on three separate monitors, providing a medium through which a viewer can reflect directly on how they are interacting with me.
Given that there is an inherent lag between an online or digital interaction, I wanted to replicate that in the video and audio component of this project – which was done through an online video call projected between the outside and inside of the device. However, since an audile conversation in the same room has no lag between when someone speaks and when someone hears it, I wore headphones so that I can only hear once it has passed a digital receiver – creating a lag.
This only works in one direction, though, since I am the only one with headphones. So to reciprocate, I responded back using a type to speech software, that is actually much longer than just a simple lag. The viewer had to wait for me to hear their response, then wait for me to type out a concise sentence to respond to them with. This is very similar to how we communicate online. You wait a prolonged amount of time for a response and it is a response of little to no emotion. No vocal inflections or pauses. It really is robotic and simple.
Genuine human communication is more complicated than that. There are facial expressions, emotion, just a physical presence that evoke a more intimate connection that is lost over a digital interface. The world as we see it, all nose in their electronic devices, is missing out on so many missed opportunities for a more pure human connection. I know this because I am thought be one of them. I recognize this in myself and in others and this project was designed to bring light to the issue and hopefully get others to see it too. This generation is the future and only when we are completely familiar with implications of our actions, can we begin to think of ways to change them.
