What is this?
This is a minimal archive of artworks that explore
telepresence as subject matter. Most entries in this archive are
better documented and discussed elsewhere (see
Resources below); however, I have made an effort to trace the subject matter across parallel art historical lineages, in
order to map out critical themes, play with technology, and key lines of inquiry surrounding the
emergent subject of telepresence. The purpose of this site is not to
emulate or re-create these artworks, nor to provide full context and analysis.
Instead, assembling a partial, in-progress and post-custodial
1
archive—building on the archival work of other institutions and
artists—this site retains a flexible and curious position in relation
to the works included.
As a working definition:
Telepresence describes the sensory
effects associated with the belief that one is experiencing mediated,
real-time communication between remote participants and/or locations.
Correspondingly, telepresence artwork may include work that engages technically or conceptually with live-streamed events, chat rooms, virtual interactivity, remote control, and any hybrid mixture of these mechanisms. Telepresence is the sensation of believing that
one is performing—and witnessing the effects of—actions in a remote
physical reality.
2 Degrees of interactivity, agency, sociality
and immersiveness contribute to a (shared) sense of telepresence.
3 Telepresence, as seen in these early explorations, suggests that it is possible to spin up a shared version of reality when and where the desire for one exists.
Research objectives (initial questions):
- What would a phenomenology of telepresence include?
-
What forms (technical, conceptual, aesthetic, political, etc) does telepresence take?
-
How has technology determined our experiences—of, by, and through
telepresence?
In consideration of these questions, and in hopes of bringing other
questions to the surface, this archive looks to artworks that investigate
problems of embodiment, representation and access—including such themes as
sharing a virtual body as, or in relation to, individuals and collectives
(co-embodiment); transitioning between bodies / non-bodies; inhabiting
assemblages or partial bodies; co/creation of “place” outside of space or
time; the limits and possibilities of asymmetric technologies such as those used to surveil or monitor; invention
and/or erasures of identity; senses of self-efficacy, and the human need
for social presence. The artworks gathered here do the work of bringing
other phenomenological modes into the fold—cyborg, cyber-, and glitch
feminisms, crip and queer theories, as well as theories of disability,
dislocation, and diaspora.
In the popular imaginary, telepresence carries themes of recursive
realities; agential selves moving between bodies or becoming ephemeral;
co-embodiment; the recording and transfer of sense-memories; perception,
sensation, and memory that exceed the capacity of a grounded subject; and
the assemblage and subsequent breakdown of what Ken Goldberg has called
“telepistemology”
4—knowing at a distance, as mediated by
technology and networks.
Spending time with these artworks is to consider how we have arrived here→
sharp ontological differences; perceptual and cognitive distortions of
time, space, and fact; stateless data bodies, pervasive surveillance, drone warfare…
as well as fugitive practices which point towards the promise of remote
intimacy, universal access, and coordinated participation in virtual
community.
1
Becerra-Licha, Sofía. “Participatory and Post-Custodial Archives as
Community Practice.” Educause, 2017, pp. 90–91.
2
Goldberg, Ken. “Virtual Reality in the Age of Telepresence.”
Convergence, vol. 4, no. 1, 1998, pp. 33–36.
3
Lombard; Ditton (1997). "At the heart of it all: the concept of
presence". Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 2. 3 (2): 0.
doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x.
4
“The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age
of the Internet.” edited by Ken Goldberg, The MIT Press, 2000.