Only the Envelope: artistic interpretations of eye-tracking imagery
(2018)
author(s): Vahri McKenzie, Neil K Ferguson
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Only the Envelope (OTE) combines several research methodologies to investigate the ways we share personal information in the public sphere. This exposition presents video and video stills as primary artefacts in a discussion about a live artwork that dramatises the act of looking. In a live art installation, a ‘scientist’ invited visitors to be involved in an ‘experiment’ — namely, viewing a film while wearing a wireless eye-tracking device. This surveillance technology generated data about viewing behaviour. However, of greater interest was investigating how engaging with OTE as creative arts research led to unanticipated findings. Also interesting were the new audiovisual documents created through a re-enactment of the visitor’s experience, in which the eye-tracking device was redeployed as a head-mounted camera. In the artistic research context of OTE, the re-enacted videos led to new data being collected and analysed, leading to novel insights. These show that OTE’s ironic performance of science, employing the coercive power of complex technologies, maintained rather than undermined the compliant behaviour of participants. At the same time, the artist’s re-enactment of the visitor’s experience makes it possible to imagine, represent, and discuss such an act of subversion by illuminating the complexity of viewing behaviour when considered within the politics of the gaze and representation. This complexity is a reflection both of the emergent nature of a process-driven creative arts research enquiry, and of the work’s investigation of data retention.
Debris (Enlightenment Panel no 2)
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Sculpted and painted wood, combined with treated rusty objects. Duct tape with boat paint models for metal sheet sculptures, 2020. Digital drawings, 2021, 2023. Dutch steel sailing boat part-restoration and renovation, Amsterdam (with Sean A. Hladkyj), 2019-20.
Relief and improvised sculptures made with industrial paints, as well as found objects, were exposed to weather conditions, including heavy rain and wind, over a few months on a floating timber raft. Working with the changes the weather was causing to the ad hoc studio, I made changes until the painting was finished, photographed, then dumped. The relief was collected. I applied the colours from those available in a symbolic manner, abstracting the view of a ghetto in a large city. The objects stand for the landmarks.
The pieces would comprise of the scenography for a theatre performance, informed by my conversations with a theatre lighting technician. The event would also include a donation event of the art objects. See external link for the theatre play, based on the tradition of the philosophical dialogue and employing the idea of performing philosophy to make it accessible to a wider audience.
Political asylum has been traditionally offered to people who flee from their countries of origin and citizenship, because of violations of their dignity, which is a human right, for their political beliefs and related activities. Currently, seven human rights of mine, five basic, have been infringed in the United Kingdom, where I have been a citizen since 2011; the origin is my native Greece. Political asylum is only offered to people, who are non-citizens of the country where asylum is sought from. At the same time, political asylum has become harder to offer, due to the global nature of persecution of whoever is perceived as a dissident.
Since 2020, Forza Nuova, the Italian affiliate of the Greek Golden Dawn, has participated in the organised international criminal case, of which I have been the target, originating from my native Greece, "accelerating" in the Netherlands and the UK in 2020, Covid-19.
Notably, Roberto Fiore, Forza Nuova's leader, inherited briefly Alessandra Mussolini's post in the EU parliament.
Drawing on the philosophical notion of impossible objects, the works attempted an indirect postcolonial critique; a suggestion for alternative, autonomous lifestyles; and a performative metaphor for global refugees.