As visual and audio data came down the line from Japan,
Zbigniew Karkowski tested our reception. "Can you see the little girl dancing?"
He asked. We could and clearly. Atau Tanaka welcomed us from Nancy, France. "Hello
Australia. Can you hear me?" We cheered excitedly as Digital Primate
carefully negotiated the connections being made with his fellow artists in France
and Japan. It had all the elements of a moon landing and the tentative, precise
discussions that accompany the making of a fragile and important connection. Once
the link had been established, the virtual environment of tonight's performance
would be ever extending. The crowd sitting on the floor and milling around outside
buzzed with anticipation.
Psychophysicist live via ISDN offered an adventurous angle on musical performance
and experimentation with technology. It was held by Christopher Coe (a.k.a. Digital
Primate) sampling Geoffrey Hales on live percussion and using pre-sampled aural
representations of Stelarc's inner and outer body. The aim of this event was to
'jam' with remotely located artists and receive filmed images of them in real
time via an ISDN connection. Meanwhile, the whole show would be loaded onto the
web to be accessed by a potential audience of millions.
The hard space experience was at Stop22 gallery in St Kilda. Digital Primate and
his technical support had been working in conjunction with Contemporary Art and
Technology (C.A.T.) for days preparing the space. At one end, two floor-to-ceiling
screens angled in onto a frontier of sampling equipment, sequencers, turntables,
keyboards, PCs, microphones and monitors. While we watched the main screens and
the cameras filming Digital Primate, we could see the images being remastered
in front of us and fed back up onto the projection screens and simultaneously
onto the web.
The reworking and manipulation of our visual focus was included in the performance.
Similarly, organic sound sources such as Geoffery Hales' percussion were fed into
the loop from the other side of the room. Slide projectors shone a redundant mixture
of images from classical Europe to fractals and mandelbrot sets onto the walls.
Another projector threw up spinning green and orange rectangles; as a low-impact
background, these images were well suited to the support DJ's funky mix.
As the main show shakily took form we had sound from France and then visuals on
one of the two large screens; then we had the same (briefly) from Japan. In a
short time these connections were lost, having given a brief period of satisfaction
and inspiration. After that only the audio link could be restored reliably. Consequently,
the audience was isolated from visual reassurance; we had little idea that the
ambient jam which followed was a live mixture of samplings from two other points
on the globe.
There were several problems at the root of this. Firstly, it was an experimental
performance involving a large element of risk, that is, the interactions that
Psychophysicist sought to acheive had not been tested like this before. Secondly,
even though the ISDN bandwidth allows a greater rate of information exchange than
is possible over a standard telephone line, the parcelling of different elements
of that information (in this case audio and visual) is diffcult to control. Hence
it was hard for both audio and visual connection to be sustained throughout Digital
Primate's performance. Thirdly, the main web server was located in Gifu, Japan
which I guess means that the Gifu show was an absolute success with full visual
and audio feedback from Australia and France. The show which we heard at Stop22
sampled Zbigniew Karkowski directly without the autonomous link with Atau Tanaka.
The show was full of subtle moments and it demonstrated that complex uses of technology
in performance are possible, now, even if the techniques and technology of their
application are, as yet, only slightly explored. To discover and publicise this
was the point of Digital Primate's excursion into cyberspace.
The testing of new ground is stimulating for both creator and viewer and I came
away with many thoughts. The arrangement of artist and viewer set up in our home
gallery alone provided for the possibility of performer/audience interaction as
well as explorer/observer relations while the initial connections were being made
and tested. Once established, these channels could have openned up the possibility,
theoretically, of any number of real and virtual interactions; quite a spin-out.
It is exciting to think that many interactions worldwide could be possible on
a night out enjoying music. And it is interesting to think that the potential
audience of millions probably had better access to the full performance than some
live viewers, simply because they were closer in virtual space to the main server
in Japan. I guess this is why Digital Primate was so keen to press on with
the show despite the lost visual connection. Entertaining a global audience is
a relatively more flexible concept now than it was when the first satellite linkups
were made more than a decade ago. Now it is possible to experiment with greater
freedom across a wider audience as long as the show goes on and there is something
to be gained from the experience. I wonder what I would have thought if Bob Geldof
had cut out on TV during Live Aid in1985.
© James Rowland, 1996
MESH film/video/multimedia/art #10,MESH is published by Experimenta Media
Arts