I came across this piece whilst looking at another David Rokeby installation on Youtube (Seen - which is also very good) as research for my practical project this year. It consists of a room a full of networked Apple Macs that use voice recognition and speech software to take audio stimulus from microphones and form a response to it. This stimulus can come from an outside source, such as the visitor, or the computers themselves. The image of an ear changes to indicate whether the computer is 'listening' or speaking (it can't do both at the same time, apparently). They fall into a chorus-like chant when left alone, and there's something inherently very sad about them that makes me really enjoy this piece. It's eerily inhuman, and yet at the same time I sympathise with the machines.
The piece is durational and has no narrative structure: visitors walk in and out whenever they like and stay for as long as they would wish. Whilst in the space the visitor is interacting with the piece: the microphones are set up to pick up speech in close-quarters with each machine, but the Macs may also respond to a visitor coughing, walking or, as shown in the video, clapping. The visitor is implicated in the performance by their presence, even if they remain completely silent: the lack of noise makes the computer network synchronise and chant chorus-like to the room. The artist's body does not make an appearance in the piece, but the body's of the spectators produce the inputs for the computers and the ears on the screens are video images of real people.
One might argue that the piece is conceptual, developing a thesis on what language, at its core, actually is by noting the differences between sentient human community and the artificial intelligence community as the two cope with language in totally different ways: the humans ask questions and use language in terms of what it denotes and connotes, whilst the machines cannot use this logic effectively (their replies are little more than paraphrases) and instead communicate most effectively (with each other) by examining the exact shape of the soundwave a word creates. Similarly therefore, one might also argue that there is a deconstructve element to the video piece in so much that its conceptual nature hangs in the balance between both an objective and subjective approach: like an experiment, the process is objective but the question is inherently formed from the personal.
However, one would struggle to find a confessional aspect to the piece. Five out of six points though, surely that makes it art???
2 comments:
Five out of six will do, I suppose.
I'd love to have a play around with this - the computers left to themselves are eerie, but the different levels of interaction are really interesting, and I like that it blurs the line between art installation and Apple advert.
It is a really chilling piece! The computers left on thier own make it feel like you are watching them in their own computer cafe, chatting and listening to one another. It is strange how each computer is an individual but at times they form a collective, reflecting natural human behaviour. I am intrigued… For me, I don't know if this piece is about communication or miscommunication. And if this piece is about the power of computers or giving power back to the people.
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