Net-Art Liveness - SUMMARY
Theoretical Framing
According to Paul Sanden “Liveness … relies on the concept of communication (whether real or imagined) between ‘performer’ and ‘audience’” (Sanden, 2013, p. 129). When a user opens a web location and starts interacting with a designed environment, performer and audience collapse into the same person. How much sense does it make then, to speak of liveness and its underlying communication when there is no division between sender and perceiver? While I often return to Sanden’s analysis of different qualities of liveness, the point of departure of his investigations is a very different one, as it is based on the idea of a musical live event – constructed or real – that is in some way mediated. Our phenomenon of investigation, however, is not based on the division of an event and its mediation, rather we are dealing with a medium which is the very place where the event happens in the moment of interaction. As such our phenomenon very much resembles digital games. Darshana Jaremanne writes about playing video games as “… playful performance. The sequence of events … is determined on the one hand by … player choices; on the other by the computer-controlled and designed rules, devices and entities. Performance in a videogame is hence constitutively hybrid.” (Jayemanne, 2017, p. 2f). The liveness in our scenario therefore needs to be investigated in this hybrid field, between a computer-controlled environment that offers affordances for interaction and aesthetic phenomena, and the user’s behavior when using it, rather than the mediation of events that took place at a different place and possibly also a different time.
In the course of this research, I referred to both theoretical fields, the field of technology-based musical performance, and the field of game studies with the understanding of game-play as performance. While for the former, Paul Sanden served as my primary reference, with the latter I will refer to Gordon Calleja’s categories of involvement in his Player Involvement Model (2011, pp. 35-53), some of which are tightly related to forms of liveness.
Liveness in user-driven application
The applicability of the term liveness in the given context needs more rigorous examination, though. As mentioned above, the investigated phenomenon is not a mediated event that bridges gaps in time and space. It is also not based on the communication between two subjects as described above by Sanden. At best it might be described as a communication between the artwork that was conceived by a subject, and the user who perceives it as an aesthetic experience.
When it comes to interactive web-pages, the user operates them in the very moment, so it is inevitably “live” and unmediated. Hence it might be argued that the problem of liveness, as we know it from theatrical or musical performances, does not arise. In performance studies, the term Liveness only emerged when a lack of it became an issue. Digital media can produce a similar lack of "here and now" in the experience of using them. While with the former the origin of the perceived lack lies in the process of mediation, with the latter it can be linked to the seemingly arbitrary repeatability of the experience, so typical for digital media. So even though the origins are very different, the problem at hand is strikingly similar. I therefore argue that it is useful to apply the term “liveness” also in the investigation of the experience of using Net-art websites.
The case-studies
This investigation was conducted with a series of altogether eight different music-based audiovisual net-art studies, that are accessed via a conventional browser. They are grouped in a unit of three Net-art project that are linked to the larger project "Why Frets?", while the other five are works using Augmented Reality. They are a substantial part of the larger project "SkylAR".
In the first part of the investigation, I focussed on the first three, which are titled “Why Frets? – Float”, “Why Frets? – Touch” and “Why Frets? – Face”. All of them can be experienced via a browser on a computer, while “Why Frets? – Face” can alternatively be used on a tablet or mobile phone.
“Why Frets? – Float” and “Why Frets? – Face” are offering 3D environments, while “Why Frets? – Touch” is based on 2D graphics. Each of them focusses on certain phenomena that are investigated for their potential to evoke feelings of liveness:
- “Why Frets? – Float” is visually designed similar to a 3D computer game by offering a 3D environment that the user can navigate in. There are a number of objects that the user can interact with. Certain objects in the space are also changing depending on the user’s position in the virtual space. All interactions as well as the navigation are dynamically generating sound. The focus of this study thus lies on interaction and spatial experience.
- “Why Frets? – Touch” is based on a simple 2D surface that displays closeup images of textiles. The user has to ‘scratch’ with the mouse across these surfaces which makes a second layer visible. However, ‘scratching’ over the textiles leads to staggering motions of the mouse that are accompanied by short sounds. The focus of the study is to what degree sensations analogous to touch can be evoked by such a simple interaction.
- “Why Frets? – Face” investigates the relationship between the user’s body and a virtual 3D environment. Facial tracking is used exclusively to operate the website. After a quick calibration, everything is controlled hands-free by moving the head and changing the facial expression. When opening the mouth, sound producing objects can be placed in the space and already existing objects can be “scanned” which makes them produce sounds. A special feature of this site is that those generated objects are preserved for later visits, even though with growing age they change and eventually disappear.
Each of the three netArt studies thus attempts to realize one particular form of liveness: ‘liveness of interaction’ and ‘spatial liveness’ in the first case, ‘tactile liveness’ in the second case, and ‘bodily liveness’ in the last case.
As mentioned above, the second group of netArt applications use augmented reality. Rather than using a computer, these are supposed to be accessed via a mobile phone or a tablet. In addition to ‘liveness of interaction’, it is what Sanden refers to as ‘virtual liveness’ that is investigated in those works: More specifically, the evocation of a persona through audiovisual representations of characters, and through the use of a variety of voices. Furthermore, the use of a personal phone for AR-interactions introduces a certain intimacy which is not the case when using computers.
Lived Virtual Place
A key-term that has become significant in the work with the three Why Frets?" projects was the creation of a lived virtual space in the sense of Henri Lefebvre's understanding of the 'lived space'. Henri Lefebvre distinguishes between 'lived space' and 'lived place' in his work "The Production of Space". Lived space refers to the abstract and conceptual aspects of space, while lived place is characterized by embodied practices and the actual experiences of individuals in a specific location. What has become evident during the work on these project is that an emotional attachment has to be formed with the virtual representation that makes the user feel a strong involvement - in the sense of Calleja (2011) with it.It is certainly not possible to list means how to achieve that, as it strongly depends on the given context and the quality of the materials used. It has definitely been interesting and revealing to observe the quality that a simple and largely static 2D site as "Why Frets? - TOUCH" can produce, only by focussing on dragging the mouse and thus trying to evoke sensations of touch.
Hence, it is definitely not a question of involving large portions of the user's body or dramatic physical gestures in order to generate feelings of embodiment in a virtual environment, but rather, what emotional attachment can be associated with a physical action. This brings to mind the research described by Julio d'Escrivan (1991). Building on prior research by NASA on so-called theory of sentics, he argues that even the smallest physical actions can be carriers of vast emotional content and can therefore become meaningful in the context of musical performance.
Virtual Persona
Paul Sanden's concept of 'virtual liveness' (2013) and specifically the virtual persona has been a main focus in the development of the Augmented Reality projects in the "SkylAR" project. Here it was the particular combination of using a personal mobile phone to access a work in public space and the ensuing encounter with a virtual character that responded to point&trigger actions, which raised the question what emotional attachment can be developed with the character. The careful shaping of the voice qualities in combination with the comic characters that were displayed proved to be crucial in the formation of a virtual character.
Again, an emotional connection and thus the formation of a virtual persona - which is for every user inevitably a different one - can not be attributed to one specific aspect in the design of the work or its interaction. It is the interplay of the listed phenomena - the personal interface, the public space, the style of image and the voice as sound source - which facilitate a particualr bonding to occur.
Conclusion
This project has focussed on the question whether interactive browser-based net-art pages have the potential to produce experiences of liveness. After net-art had a boom in the 1990s and then fell into oblivion, it has been moved into focus during the Corona pandemic.
At a time when concert halls and galleries were closed, artists explored how the Internet can be creatively used as a medium for presenting art on the one hand, but they also rediscovered it as an independent artistic medium..
References
Calleja, Gordon. In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2011.