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m3 " the final word" 5/13/02
M3 History 01 02 03
quote
from early m3 document:
subject of the research: how technology
mediates and conditions new environments that make possible new types
of social formations. m3 is a performance built in a modules. it is
not an object but rather a series of investigations in multiple performance
forms (lecture/installation/ performance/net) that aims to explore how
contemporary technologies alter and manifest radically different forms
of social relations and interaction — in particular, how the notion
of interface and the complex configurations and relations between human
and technological “experience” fits together..how technolgy
conditions our perception and how ...social effects and ramifications...
the project involves creating two types of social formation”
- internal — the making of the work as the discplinary boundaries
surrounding any particular system are erased
- in the external event-experiment: to build an environment (lets
say a sandbox) which consists of a series of interfaces — interface
here is defined as any system that allows a connection between human
input in the physical world to be translated into computation.
PART I: the first part of the experiment
involves the building of a series of interfaces — the interfaces
themselves will consist of visual and architectural elements which will
be developed by a team of “experts” — these experts are
not only engineers but social planners, an organizational neurophysicst,
a composer, video artist and sponge internal... etc... the interfaces
are developed by this cross discplinary team of artists and scientists
server-collaboration begins in distributed environment — the result
is a flexible environment-a sandbox as model where in the first hour of
the performance, the gathered viewers can work alone or in groups to shape
the environment they are in...each interface can affect the room in some
specific way (change the overall acoustic shape,...) each group can spend
a certain amount of time in the “box” or playroom and after
their allotted time elapses, can observe others interacting
PART II: an inverse theater where the
spectators become the performers—the participants are led from the
first room to an identical room... here they observe a scripted performance—a
series of events which is interconnected with media and in which media
is controlled from both internal as well as external sources (events outside).
Other ideas that emerged in discussion of Room 1:
- what are the ways in which the “toys” are networked with each
other?
How does someone else’s play effect someone else in the same space
(real and networked)? (note: these are still interesting
ideas but would certainly need more than YB's resources to do)
Event II: ROOM2: Theater space Second space:
Always knew that we wanted to frame the overall “performance”
with the traditional trappings of the proscenium. Many ideas discussed
— always a certain notion of a performance which, while appearing
to operate in a standard way, would work at a threshold level — you
would see and hear it but somehow it would always be fading in and out
— as something which was being played in front of you but somehow
was a phantom at the same time — Chris and Laura discussed this type
of event early on-particularly after Chris saw St. Francois de Assisi
in Salzburg and Dumb Type in London — the notion of stillness occassionally
broken by blasts of sound, movement and light and other media — discussed
ways in which this could be accomplished in the traditional setting of
performance…
Later discussions focused on the room being controlled from without (from
variables out in the world). Open system subjected to the larger environment-world—(a
tug of war between performers and the interfaces, which would guided by
outside information flows—fighting between the performers)…
thematic: If Room 1 was a machine-a
space without rules that would enable a radical kind of experiential “learning”
where social meaning and context emerged in a sustained cooperation between
individuals who did not know each other (this is
utopian, to be sure) then Room 2 was a machine with rules-driven
by a tension between endogenous/exogenous variables—meaning would
now be “overlayed” from the world outside:
While conceptually all of this holds together, problem of specifics (which
always haunts us) arose in terms of what this performance actually would
look like—what the payoff to the viewer/participant would be? Not
resolved...
Event III: Network space: Not thought
through. A vague idea emerged that somehow those on the net would follow
and intervene in the performance in real time, thus complicating the effects
of the interfaces... and complicating the performance...
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