NET-ART LIVENESS
an artistic research project on the experience of liveness in browser-based virtual spaces
Marko Ciciliani, PhD
Three Net-Art pages:
Five Augmented Reality Pages:
INTRODUCTION
This investigation focuses on the question, to what degree qualities of liveness can be generated in browser-based audiovisual virtual environments. More specifically, the phenomena of investigation are artistically motivated 2D or 3D environments where the user can interact with certain features provided in those spaces. This research is motivated by experiences made during the pandemic, when many exhibitions or concerts took place online. While during that time it became obvious that virtual events cannot fully reproduce the qualities of the real-world events it tried to replace, for many – including myself – it came as a surprise that in these virtual events moments arose that gave a strong sense of being “here and now”. “Here” in that case was a virtual environment, where, for example, multiple users gathered in order to meet and to enjoy an artistic event with a sense of togetherness. “Now” meant that something happened in that very moment that would pass without making it possible to retrieve the identical situation. Because of certain circumstances, the “here and now” seemed unique and not reproducible at any time and any place, as it is otherwise often the case with digital media.
With this research project, I intend to investigate how such qualities of liveness can be designed in order to offer the users of such environments a special experience. While during Corona times it was often the ‘social liveness’, the getting together of many people albeit with avatars, that provided the foundation of the sensation of “here and now”, my intention is to investigate how particular designs of environments – aesthetic and technological – can support similar experiences of presence. While later on, I will differentiate various qualities of liveness, for now the term should be understood merely as the sensation of this unique “here and now”, as described above.
This project was made possible through the support of the
Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport
and the
Land Steiermark
In this project, an attempt is made to create the experience of presence and liveness in virtual browser-based spaces in order to enable aesthetic experiences with qualities that are usually attributed to the physical world. However, the digital environment will not be used to reproduce experiences of the physical world in an identical manner; rather, media-related specifics in the experience of presence and liveness in digitality will be explored.
The research question is:
How can browser-based virtual spaces offer audiovisual experiences that exhibit qualities of presence and liveness comparable to experiences in non-virtual spaces, while also unfolding media-specific characteristics?
The project has been divided in two parts, the first one comprising three net-art projects that are to be experienced with laptops or desktop computers. The second part comprises five augmented-reality experiences that are to be experienced with mobile devices. The two categories explore different forms of interactions, where each has a different potential of generating experiences of liveness with virtual phenomena.
This project is takes place as artistic research, which means that (1) the research question emerges from artistic practice and (2) artistic practice serves as the main method for exploring it and thereby arriving at findings.
Because of this, the net-art projects that were created are also referencing larger art projects, specifically the project "Why Frets?" and "SkylAR". While these large-scale projects are not to be considered as part of the investigation of liveness in virtual spaces as a whole, they are providing a context in the choice of materials that the net-art pages use.
In order to explore the research, the links on the left should be followed which lead to the individual net-art projects that explore the research question from varying angles. They do not need to be followed in chronological order. Only in the "SkylAR" section, the introductory part should be read before entering the individual projects.
