WEDNESDAY 2ND APRIL 2003

RESPOND opens with thought-provoking debates

Future Physical’s RESPOND Network Exchange kicked off on Wed April 2 at Cambridge’s Babbage Lecture Theatre with a stunningly thought-provoking set of speeches from a number of noted intellects.

RESPOND – the final Future Physical Network Exchange, exploring the theme of Responsive Environments – “Culminates the Future Physical programme of research and exploration,” said Future Physical artistic director Ghislaine Boddington. Francois Penz, director of CUMIS, opened by pointing out that attendees were sitting in a lecture theatre named after the father of computing, and sitting yards away from where Crick and Watson cracked the mysteries of DNA, suggesting that should provide a fine atmosphere for exploring the blurry edge between the body and technology.

Paul Sermon <PAUL SERMON NOTES> < KEYNOTE SESSION PICTURES>
The first speaker was Paul Sermon, a world-renowned interactive media artist based at the University of Salford, famous for his work with telematics and telepresence. Sermon began by showing his 1992 installation Telematic Dreaming. Telematic Dreaming consisted of two blue beds in remote spaces, each of which was covered by a vertical projection of video filmed above the other bed. Thus, participants could interact with a video representation of whoever was on the other networked bed. Using blue-screen sheets, they could erase parts of their bodies.

The outcome was very striking: participants clearly enjoyed interacting with the live projections and clearly felt a sense of “telepresence” – although physically, they could not touch, they could interact. Sermon said: “When I began the project, I was unaware of telepresence, but I found that user/viewers could touch with their eyes. In Telematic Dreaming, the sense of sight was exchanged for the sense of touch. What made telematic dreaming so successful was its interface: the bed.”

Sermon showed footage of a number of other installations. “There’s no simulation like home” was designed like a typical terraced house, except each room contained a different telematic interface: people in the bedroom, lounge and kitchen could interact telematically with participants elsewhere, and the last room – the bathroom – exhibited a twist: what appeared to be a mirror above the basin was in fact a window to an identical, mirror-image bathroom.

Srmon also showed a telematic installation which projected different video streams onto each side of a wall of water, and his most recent effort, Peace Talks. Peace Talks, said Sermon, is: “A staged computer game simulation of UN peace talks.” Two participants sit at tables in a blue and a green room, wearing VR headsets. A computer-generated background (using games technology) created the illusion that participants were seated at opposite sides of a negotiating table, and participants were encouraged to discuss the Iraq war.

Christa Sommerer <CHRISTA SOMMERER NOTES> < KEYNOTE SESSION PICTURES>

The next address was given by Christa Sommerer, Associate Professor at Japan’s Iamas – Institute of Advanced Media Arts And Sciences and researcher at the ATR Media Information Science Research lab in Kyoto. Sommerer explained that: “Our aim at Iamas is to apply principles of Artificial Life and complexity to interactive art.”

She began by showing a definition of Artificial Life, stating that AL organisms should display self-organisation, metabolisation, self-reproduction and adaptive evolution. She also gave a definition of complex systems: “When a set of evolving, autonomous particles interact, the global system displays emergent collective properties.” She added that complex systems “Are often referred to as between order and chaos.”

She then showed her 1994 work A-Volve, which allowed participants to create their own AL creatures by drawing on a touch-screen, and to “touch” projections of those creatures in a tank of water. She explained that the shape of the creature determined its genetic code and therefore its behaviour: users could influence their behaviour by interacting with them. “The idea was to gove users a strong interactive influence and to make the life behaviour of the creatures dependent on their design.”

Next, she demonstrated Life Spacies which, she said, “Extended the principle of artificial Life to a live system.” Life spacies was based at a website, where participants could write messages which would form the genetic code of insect-like creatures. She moved on to 1999’s Life Spacies II – currently on show as part of Future Physical’s RESPOND Network Exchange. Life Spacies II, she said, is a simplified version with a graphical user interface that allowed users to feed the creatures by typing. The system could support up to 50 creatures – although users had to sustain them by feeding them.

Sommerer also demonstrated Riding The Net, an installation wired to the Internet with a touch-screen interface which, through voice recognition, sought to download image files, and The Living Room, a walk-in installation in which hidden microphones picked up keywords from participants and projected corresponding images searched from the web in a collage on the walls. She said: “An intelligent environment emerged: it was quite addictive to play with the images. The next step, which we are working on, is an immersive environment called CAVE, where you see yourself immersed in data and with a tweezer interface, can catch icons and place them in space.”

Finally, she showed Nano-Scape, an “Invisible nanosculpture. Participants wore magnetic rings on their hands, which they slid over a table with electromagnets beneath. They felt an invisible shape, and a feelings of being attracted and repulsed.”

Marcos Novak <MARCOS NOVAK NOTES> < KEYNOTE SESSION PICTURES>

The final address was given by Marcos Novak, who described himself as a “Transarchitect,” based at the University of California Santa Barbara and the California Nano Systems Institute. Novak began by pointing out that he normally delivers such lectures over the space of an hour and a half, rather than the 20 minutes he had been allotted – then proceeded to deliver a stellar, thought-provoking address.

He began with musings about art, quoting Zeno as saying: “Art is the road-building habit”. He explained that he works with; “Liquid architectures, which apply to biology, technology, discipline, poetics and culture.” He gave a timeline of his interets: progressing from architecture, music and computation in 1979, to generativity and Artificial Life in the 80s, to cyberspace in 1990, projects called Virtual Dervish and Worlds In Progress until 1994, transarchitectures until 1998, invisible architectures until 2000 and most recently, the Alien Within and AlloBio.

He then introduced the phrase “Transvergence: it’s a theoretical construct – a word I’ve invented which is a distinction to convergence and divergence. I’m interested in the culture of modernity – transmodernity – culture is on its way towards virtuality and in this transmodern period, we are doing some strange things.”

Novak argued that: “Late capitalism, globalisation and the global corporate body are manners of aliens. What we’re building now is scaled to a huge body, in which the length of a footstep is the distance between airports. I would propose thatthings happen on certain bases which allow convergence then divergenceand transvergence – those bases are digi, nano, bio, neuro and quanto.” He explained that he is interested by the biological terms anagenesis – linear evolution – cladogenesis – the evolutionary issue of the emergence of branches – and xenogenesis – the creation of different species. He said: “I’d like to propose allogenesis: the emergence of the alien.” That, he said, was at the heart of transvergence, in whichactors and interactors transact to create something new and completely different to the actor and interactor.

He illustrated the concept of transvergence with a diagram showing two light cones, divergence forming the top half and convergence the bottom; outside the cone was he termed “Elsewhere”; transvergence described a movement from the point of convergence/divergence into the Elsewhere. He said: “I’m trying to develop a methodology of intentional divergence, pushing something by an act of will into Elsewhere. You’re looking for something which is not like whatever it came from but is still viable.” He raised the idea of a utility fog composed of nanotech super computers, which would allow objects literally to appear from nowhere.

He moved on to his current work: “I’m collaborating with a molecular chemist, and we’re starting with RNA, which is more flexible than DNA. It’s possible at a molecular level to organise the geometry of RNA and create Lego-style particles which can be built up into a form, then a sheet and finally an architecture that would fit a million times into the width of a human hair. We’re heading towards rapidly prototyped sculptures and immersive installations.”

Finally, Novak showed Eduction, The alien within: a collaboration with a hypnotist in which he exposed subjects to an immersive representation of 4D structures and the human consciousness.