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Very Nervous System and the Benefit of Inexact Control Interview with David Rokeby Rokeby has
graduated with honours in Experimental Art from
Ontario College of Art in 1984, he has exhibited
and given talks in Canada, US, Mexico, Brazil,
Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium, Finland,
Japan and Korea, including the Venice Biennale in
1986, Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) in 1991 and
2002, the Mediale (Hamburg, Germany) in 1993, the
Biennale di Firenze (Florence, Italy) in 1996 and
the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002. Rokeby
was, among others, awarded the Petro Canada Media
Arts Award (1988), the Prix Ars Electronica Award
of Distinction for Interactive Art (1991 and 1997),
and the Award for Interactive Art of the British
Academy of Film and Television Arts (2000). Roberto
Simanowski talked with him about "systems of
inexact control" which reject the control fetish,
about their pragmatic role in every day life, about
the bastardization of aleatoric art, about
interactivity as the decline of critical distance
and about technology as a genre. |
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DR: They were never
really separate. I started programming when I was 15 (in
1976). In those days, the whole computer thing was very
do-it-yourself. So in order to experiment with doing art on
the computer, I had to program it. As things developed, I
taught myself the technologies I needed to know in order to
realize my projects. So the whole process is very
needs-based and art driven. I have always had a mix of
math/logic/science with my art/music/literature. dd:
In one of your first installations, Body Language
from 1984, the movements of one's body is monitored and
analyzed by a computer and create sound which finally
informs the movement. In one of your recent pieces,
inter/face at the Toronto digifest 2002, 3-D
letters are projected on the theatre screen according to the
facial expressions of the person sitting in the middle seat,
monitored by a camera. In the same year at UNPLUGGED -
Ars Electronica 2002 you have exhibited
n-cha(n)t: seven monitors hanging from the ceiling
murmuring text based on the words picked up from the
visitors in front of these monitors and accompanying
microphones. What is the technology behind these
pieces? DR: Each of these
pieces uses a different mix of technologies. I have been
tracking movements of the audience for my work since 1982
(the beginnings of Body Language / Very Nervous
System). I like to create systems of inexact control. I
think that the computer is the result of a fetishization of
control and so I like, in my contrary way, to work against
that dominant paradigm. Control is over-rated... Or perhaps
it is better to say that we need to learn how to balance
control (which is very useful, i.e. in surgery or driving)
with other sorts of engagements with other things and
otherness that are looser than control relationships, where
we allow ourselves to be open, engaged and willing to be
surprised. Otherwise life is dead. So in my interfaces for
Body Language / Very Nervous System and
inter/face, I have tried to create interfaces which
require the use of complex systems, or perhaps, systems that
have complicated and conflicted control mechanisms. The body
and the face are used expressively all the time, but not
usually consciously. The body is not simply an output device
however. Our relationship with our bodies is very complex
and layered with the social, physiological, and emotional.
So our intent is never completely reflected in the resulting
action. The action is less controlled, yet richer. Since
interactive systems are (can be) rich feedback loops,
including these more complicated parameters of human
activity makes for a richer interaction than if (as with a
mouse input) the interface is clearly defined, quantified
and limited. In a good interaction system
(as opposed to a good interface for practical control), each
action on the part of the user is as much a question as a
statement. Each action is an experiment and is the next
stage in an unfolding dialogue which neither the user nor
the system is in complete control of the course of
things. dd:
Your installations are examples of interactive art, which
involves the viewer physically in creating and performing
the work, thereby requiring them to reflect the consequences
of their actions, to communicate with themselves much more
directly than in the case of paintings and books. The
audience of interactive art is part of the work and, like
Bruce Nauman's Corridor as well as Joachim Sauter's
and Dirk Lüsebrink's Zerseher (1992), show very
clearly its actual subject matter. While "Corridor" allows
the audience to understand what governs the interaction and
to finally control it, many of your pieces deny such
understanding and control. Thus interaction - not with other
people but with technology - conveys the feeling of
uncertainty, unpredictability, and disempowerment. In your
description these "systems of inexact control" appear as a
negation of the fetishization of control. Could you explain
further the philosophical dimension behind your
work? DR: For the most
part, sense of control is a dangerous illusion. Many people
are unwilling to engage in situations where the locus of
control is ambiguous (which includes virtually all life
situations). I am trying to propose a different model. You
might not be able to gain control over my systems, but you
will almost certainly sense that your actions are highly
significant to the outcome, and that the outcome does
tangibly reflect your input. The fact that my neighbour does
not always reply the same way when I say 'hello' does not
mean that this is a disempowering experience. If we weed out
of our lives those things that are uncertain, unpredictable
and ambiguous, we will become a very sad species. The
computer sets up the illusions that total control is
possible. But the crux of this illusion is the fact that the
control only functions effectively within the carefully
constructed ambiguity vacuum of the computer. This is not to
say that the computer is useless beyond its privileged
interior realm, but that the computer is designed to
carefully maintain an illusion, a fantasy of control that is
not a useful paradigm got real-world encounters, except for
dictators and other absolute rulers. dd: A
clever concept with a quite pragmatic intention: computer
based art denying the fantasy of control instigated and
maintained by the computer. Do you as the programmer at
least keep control over the
system? DR: The programmer
keeps control over the text of the program (usually). The
biggest challenge for a programmer is to not keep control
over the program itself. Experiments in artificial life and
artificial intelligence all imply a loss of control, because
the system, to succeed, MUST transcend the control of the
programmer. (This is both exciting and scary of course...
for both the programmer and sometimes the user... There are
times when absolute control is unambiguously desirable). If
you look closely at the statements of interactive artists
all the way back to the 60, you will find most artists
expressing the desire to create system that surprise them.
(This is less true now that many people have rushed into
media art only because it is trendy.) dd:
Such desire for surprise can still be found in many examples
of interactive art, which give control to the reader or to
the software. In your essay Transforming Mirrors you
emphasize that interactive art not only questions and
transforms the role of the spectator but of the artist as
well. With respect to painting, sculpture, and writing you
state: "The act of realizing a work is a process of
progressively narrowing the range of possibilities by a
series of creative choices until one of the possible has
been manifested in the finished work." In contrast to that
"the interactive artist decides at some point in this
process not to choose from among the remaining possibilities
but to create some sort of audience-actuated choosing
mechanism." You finally refer to John Cage's chance
compositions. Do you see your own work in the tradition of
aleatoric art? DR: My work could be
seen as a bastardization of the tradition of aleatoric art.
One could simply say that I replace randomness or
pseudo-randomness with the slightly more textured complexity
of real-life. But the real heresy then is the feedback loop.
While, like aleatoric artists, I use sources outside of my
control to make decisions in the unfolding of my work, my
sources tend to be sentient and capable of responding
willfully to the results of their own actions. It is this
feedback loop that most interests me in
interaction. It is probably important to
point out that my creative process doubles as a personal
critical inquiry into ideas of relationship and interaction
and the ways that the explicit mechanical interactive
relationships made possible by computers change, challenge,
enlarge and diminish notions of relationship and
interaction. Any interactive system must construct some sort
of model of the user. It then in some way reflects this
limited model of the user back to the user. As I have argued
in "Transforming Mirrors", this effect is amplified by the
feedback loop of the interaction. The whole system functions
as a filter that reinforces some kinds of information and
experience and inhibits others. If a person spends
substantial time in direct interaction with such a system,
their sense of self is substantially modified. For example,
after 30 minutes of interaction with Very Nervous System,
the user usually unconsciously relates the sounds in their
environment to some aspect of their movements. Web-browsers
turn people into 'he or she who clicks', since multiple
choice clicking becomes the dominant mode of existence in
that context. This paradigm is useful but it changes people
and their relationship to knowledge and information... it
prioritizes a certain mode of connectedness and partially
obscures others. To put this in another way,
interactive systems change the user's experience of 'being'
and therefore their experience of self. This is particularly
interesting and complicated if the system is quite
transparent, because if the cause of the shift of being is
not clearly evident, it is internalized... it becomes part
of the user's self-definition. Interactive art does not so
much change the role of the artist or audience as much as it
pushes those roles to one possible extreme of the range of
artist/audience relationships. Duchamp imagined his work as
mechanisms of signs put in motion by the perception of the
viewer. Any work of art can be analyzed from the perspective
of interaction if we allow perceived change of the artwork
to be as valid as actual change in the artwork. What is
perhaps different for some interactive artists is that the
questions of open-ness and the role of the author become
fundamental to the work and explicit rather than secondary
(and implicit). dd:
In your essay you quote Cage concerning aleatoric art: "the
highest purpose is to have no purpose at all." Is your
purpose to give up the author's authority? DR: Giving up the
author's authority is an interesting constraint to apply to
one's work. I do not really think that it is possible. (In
fact, much of my writing has focussed dangers of the
ILLUSION of the LACK of expressive, subjective author in
commercial software.) But I feel so confident that I cannot
disappear from my work that I enjoy pushing this to an
extreme. It takes in a more playful aspect... it also allows
me to take more pleasure in my own work, as it is always
renovating itself and becoming fresh and surprising me. (Not
that this is not possible for a painter, but I approach this
with a more conscious intent). I am very interested in the
power play between language/formulation and
possibility/potential. We trade away something when we
formulate (I like Handke's comment in his diaries that
formulation is the beginning of forgetting.) We gain immense
power at the same time. It would be better to think of my
game with authority as an exploration of this language /
possibility relationship. It sometimes seems to be
unsupportable to narrow a piece down to a linear narrative
when there is such a rich field of possibility implied by
the works conceptual basis. (Fixed narrative is great for
story telling, but I am not really interested in story
telling, at least not in this part of my work.) dd:
Lets dwell on the aspect of participation as the considered
advantage of interactive art and digital media. A buzzword
since the late 80's, interactivity has been considered to
empower the user, promote freedom of choice, and overcome
the paradigm of passive consumption. As the devils advocate
I may object that such participation undermines critical
distance in favor of the intensities of direct sensual
stimulation and the magic of technical effects. Hence,
interactive art would just be another kind of entertainment,
trading contemplation against involvement and immediacy,
cognitive against physical engagement. The question, of
course, is not only whether you agree but also whether an
aesthetic of the sensual and magic effect - or an aesthetic
of the spectacle - would necessarily be an impoverished
aesthetic, or rather another kind of aesthetic, much more
appropriate to the character of our time and of this
technology than the meaning-centered approach of the 60's
and 70's. DR: Any buzzword must
be eviscerated (have its stomach ripped out and be
disemboweled). Interactivity is guilty of
over-sensationalizing and diminishing critical distance. BUT
that is mostly because artists have been willing to play it
that way and promoters have reinforced this because they saw
the hunger of the audience for such things. Very Nervous
System bears its share of guilt. It was exciting,
overwhelming, etc. This was not a problem in 1983, because
the experience was so inexplicable that it could be a really
transformative experience of body and space and sound. By
1988 when the hype machine around interactive was building
steam, people were already developing weapons for the
disarming of the experience. By being able to say "I read
about this sort of thing in Wired Magazine", they were able
to neutralize the rather disarming experience and make it
comfortable and neat. Secondly, Very Nervous
System was intentionally created to subvert
consciousness. Just as I object to an absence of critical
distance, I object to a lack of experiential grounding which
I think is as egregious as lack of critical distance. VNS
was intended to suspend critical distance for a while in
order to create an experiential base for critical distance.
This aspect was not always successful, and my later work
changed to more consciously create spaces for reflection and
distance. dd:
Could you describe how you provide such spaces for distance,
possibly with an example? DR: The clearest
example is the relationship between Very Nervous
System and the Giver of Names. They are both
systems that look out into the world, analyze what they see
and comment on that using sound in some way. In VNS, the
interaction is constant and the feedback loop extremely
fast. In GON, the interaction is the act of choosing and
placing objects on the
pedestal, but this is a momentary act, and the feedback loop
is stretched over 30 seconds to a minute (instead of 1/30 of
a second). This extra time in the feedback loop is a space
for reflection. For example, in GON, you watch the screen
showing the computer's act of perceiving the object and
simultaneously see the object through your own perception
system, and there is time for this stereoscopic parallelism
to unfold and be considered. In a work like Watch,
you are subtly encouraged to spend extended quiet time in
contemplation of the installation. Many people stay for more
than 15 minutes, just watching, but I carefully designed
hidden interactions and other events to draw people into
staying for that long. I wanted to use the technology to
create a space where issues could be considered more
thoughtfully. The technology is so powerful that I figure I
should be able to find a way to use it to create such space
rather than to overwhelm my audience. By not playing to its
natural power, but working towards my personal aim, I reduce
the awe-inspiring nature of the work, but get closer to
presenting the experience that I want to share, and give
people more space to consider it on their own
terms. dd:
You mention the audience's hunger for interactivity and the
steam the hype machine around it is building. How do you see
the role of the entertainment industry in this context and
what would characterize engaged art? DR: Well, the
entertainment industry naturally wants to entertain people,
and make money above all. So it would take an extraordinary
person in the industry context to step away from intense
entertainment and intense earning potential because of
hard-to-define concerns they might have about the larger
implications of their products. Everyone is on a tight
deadline in a globally competitive marketplace, and there is
no time to step away and think carefully. As an artist, it
is part of my "job description" to regularly get interested
in things that I can barely justify in hard and concrete
terms, and to take very subtle ramifications seriously and
follow them doggedly until I have a better sense of what
might be going on. Now that (at least in America) most
research institutions rely heavily on corporate support,
there are very few people in a position to examine the long
view and the less tangible implications, and this is a
serious crisis for our culture. dd:
Your installations are based on your software Very
Nervous System and many of your works with this software
are a close circuit installation where the monitored action
of the user causes a reaction of the system, which finally
may influence the user's action (with the exception of works
like Watch, Guardian Angel, Taken, or
Seen). In your essay The Construction of
Experience: Interface as Content you describe specific
technologies like word processors or hypermedia as a means
to provide a specific experience - like the freedom and
burden of alternative navigation in hypermedia - regardless
of the content. With reference to McLuhan one could say: the
technology is the message. I wonder, whether one also could
say: the technology is a genre, for it provides certain
semantic and stylistic patterns. Is Very Nervous
System its own genre? DR: Yes, and I
produced individual works in that genre. But in most
people's hands, the technologies used in VNS do not produce
a work in the Very Nervous System genre. Technology plus
point-of-view might create a genre. Technology alone tends
to create pattern and cliché. dd:
Would you not say that technology creates a specific
paradigm of performance and interaction the way a genre
establishes a frame of semantic and syntactical parameters?
DR: It really depends
how narrowly you define genre. I guess I define it more
narrowly than you do. For me, it implies a more coherent
cultural texture than technology alone tends to
impart. dd:
One last questions: You have been exhibiting your
installations in galleries, trade shows, science museums,
and public and private spaces. The Internet as the most
accessible and least controlled exhibition space you have
not used so far - probably because it does not provide the
close circuit constellation your work requires and because
it changes the setting of collective perception to
individual perception in the audience's homes. On the other
hand, this setting can create a collective audience over
long distances and free an installation from local space to
a global event. The outcome of such an installation can
either be perceived within the Internet (as for example in
Simon Biggs' "Babel," which monitors and visualizes all
visitors of the website) or the result of the Internet
setting itself takes place in real space (as in Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer's DR: The Internet is a
great venue for many artists. It is not so great for me.
Physical presence and involvement, scale and sense of space,
and real-timeness are factors that are often important in my
work and hard to implement on the web. I dislike the
mouse/keyboard/screen as a delivery / experiential medium.
Put another way, the Internet inevitably promotes as
side-effects most of the aspects of computer that I have
spent most of my career fighting. I am not against the
Internet but I am not interested in working within the
current constraints. The size of audience, breadth of reach
is not worth the tradeoffs for me. This is a personal
position... I have worked with communications systems and
distance in my work since 1986 (when I linked Very
Nervous Systems in New York State and Paris, for
example), but again, these were not for mass on-line
consumption. |