Eduardo Kac

1. Eduardo Kac Videotext Telepresence Telecommunications

2. new insights can be gained by examining artworks that are themselves real dialogues… • Digital Artist for over 30 years • Challenged conventions of traditional art world • Constantly exploring new uses for digital media • Helped engineer a number new fields in digital art …that is, active forms of communication between two living entities

3. Digital art fields • Videotext • Telecommunications • Telerobotics • Telepresence Participant Interaction andCommunication

4. Videotext - Tesão Accessible online during Brazil High-Tech (1986) Animated Poem Series of Lines and Shapes assemble into letters and then words Erotic-lyrical statement Viewer must experience animation to understand message behind poem

5. Videotext – D/EU/s Also created in 1986 Features the assemblage of what appears to be an ordinary UPC barcode Numbers refer to the date piece was created and uploaded Letters form the word Deus (God) isolating the eu (Latin for I) Questions man’s relationship to God, man to consumerism, God to labeling and identity by computer

6. New media art is collaborative and interactive… • Telecommunication art refers to works created with telecommunication equipment • Based on interactions between two or more people • Recreate the spontaneity of a verbal conversation …and abolishes the state of unidirectionality traditionally characteristic of literature and art.

7. Telecommunication –Interfaces (1990) Two groups of artists – one in Chicago, the other in Pittsburgh Images of the artists’ faces transmitted live via slow-scan television Spontaneous, improvised images reflected the unpredictable nature of conversations Idea of ‘collective identity’ Visual dialog

8. TelecommunicationInterfaces Kac, as creator, gave up a considerable amount of control over the final object Information in flux, negotiating meaning between artist and participant, and communication as an experience – all more important than an art object Visuals merely document the process

9. I wanted to enable the participant to cross the screen… • Telepresence art “creates invented worlds populated by imaginary creatures embodied in electronic parts” • Combines visual messaging and bilateral dialog with remote experience and robotics • Participant can experience remote spaces through a different point of view …and gain a sense of his or her own presence in a remote social milieu

10. Telepresence – Ornitorrinco (1989 – 96) Began in 1989 in Chicago with hardware engineer Ed Bennett Developed through 1996, comprising of six telepresence events Ornitorrinco is Portuguese for “platypus” Objectives: Create a remote world for participants to explore, imply kinship between animal and robot, and highlight hybridity

11. TelepresenceOrnitorrinco Hybrid between robot and human Participant remained at one location and remotely controlled robot at a second location Participants could see the created space from Ornitorrinco’s point of view Participants had to rethink preconceived notions of scale, spatial relationships, and navigation

12. Ornitorrinco Still shots

13. TelepresenceOrnitorrinco Each person constructs a personal mental image of the space Mental image is based on the images the participant sees through the robot Movement is physically real, but the constructed mental image of the space comes from images on screen The passage between two spaces defines the nature of Telepresence communication

14. Eduardo Kac Videotext Experience animated messages Telecommunications Bilateral communication TelePresence Communication to understand space