o Subtleties ‘and’ subtitles
Okay, let’s expand on the ‘subtitles’ just because everything is cristal clear : Subtitles can be understood as translations, as interpretations. Each interpretation transposes something into something else. My ‘documents’ that I deliver as my part of the dialogue are the living sign of that interpretation. Next to that sign they might be more. Hopefully! Mightfully! No more subtitles!
A suggestion would be to play a different tune, think of a career in landscape gardening, or just work titles as a spare time infatuation. Translation creates difference, and that is what we like. It is space in its purest form. As a coup de grace, a deus ex machina, a spark of the dynamo, a single touch that unhinges, space becomes liminal. Beyond thresholds that occupy and register space. Best thing would be that that liminal space was a natural constituent element in all imaginable dephts of each design. But that’s mere theory! Hitrates do have a point in showing how vulnerable design-issues are!
If you would believe that the Unicode was cross culturally transparant enough and that finally Chinese would be embraced as the new lingua franca of the internet, and we in the west would all learn Chinese, than we would be rid of all subtitles. No more subtitles! Yes, unimedia paradise!
A haphazardly picked up note from a scholar that dropped by :
‘ This liminal space, however, is bound to contain a resistance to translation, that on the other hand energizes the drive to overcome it. If interpretations are conceived likewise, they turn into an attempt to narrow the very space they produce. For the sake of grasping intent, interpretations dileneate the parameters into which the subject matter is to be translated. In other words it conveys the viewpoints and assumptions that provide the angle from which the subject matter is approached. Interpretations diversify the framework into which the subject matter is transposed. The register not only changes but is also fine-tuned in each act of interpretation. E.g. one should investigate into the difference in translation at the beginning and at the end of a movie. It could well be that translations tend to be more precise, tend to reveal more about the way the interpretation is grounded, near the end of a movie. Maybe it could be distilled from such an inquery that the interpretative intent changes in the course of translation. Maybe the register, merely the bootstraps by which we pull ourselves up toward comprehension, must be understood as a multiplicity. And is translatability primarily determined by the potential of discovering the subtleties between the various applied registers of interpretation. Thus : interpretation is self-referential, a recursive loop.’
It is a comforting idea that even literary scholars have some notion of self-organizing systems, recursive loops, self-referentiality, authority and new configurations. Especially for men that could be my granddaddy (Iser). No more subtitles! (Btw, it was not him that dropped by, not by a long shot.)
If you act, and believe in the token of that act you should be allowed to ‘interact’. That is what thinking about media should be about. But, that, again is theory! How to design something that ‘works’? How to live?
o Looping : feedback & feedforward & world games
‘The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system.’
R.Buckminster Fuller
R.Buckminster Fuller considered his trade to be ‘comprehensive anticipatory design science’. Not architecture or design for that matter. His aim was much higher! As a world mananger of processes and creative 4D solutions he proposed a game. The underpinning was : ‘How to make the world work’. Vital part of the Game was to turn information, data into knowledge. After the motto was determined in the formulation : ‘’Fostering responsible change and citizenship in a global society’, the team that Fuller worked with presented the list of 18 points that the world needed to be addressed in order to solve the major systematic problems confronting humanity. (1965). The project originated as a proposal for the U.S.A. contribution to the 1967 World’s Fair in Monteral : an interactive game, supported by a large computer, shown on a large dynamic display of the Dymaxion World Map (a Fuller invention). It is played by trying to generate the best strategies for improving living conditions for all the earth’s inhabitants. The starting point should be the distribution on the globe of natural resources, population, energy, means of transport and communication, etc.. Participants, also out of politics, have the chance to play their own concepts, to then be confronted with a display of the consequences their decisions have on the rest of the world.
The project lasted up to 1975, but still on the internet you can find what remained after Bucky died.
The basis of his ideas on who to work on all these issues from a design stance are :
o Comprehensive : starting from the whole system and working back to the special case, dealing with all facets of a problem, including the system the problem was part of;
o Anticipatory : in that it sought to recognize the threats coming down the pike, as well as to deal with the way things were going to be when the solution was going to be implemented, not the way things were at the present;
o A Design Strategy : in contradiction to a political, or let’s –pass-a-law-and change-human-behavior, approach, that sought to change the larger system of which the specific problem was a part;
o A Science – Based Methodology : that used the latest advances of science to benefit humanity.
How to make things accessible? Fuller thought of making a game would do the trick. Still, the systematic problems and the directions for solutions he registered as subtitles to the world and its cosmos, remain untouched. Or so it seems. Malnutrition, starvation, lack of shelter, clean water supply, acid rain, refugee relief, soil erosion, land mines, AIDS, the Plague, terrorism, war, and all those other things you read, see, and hear. In short : what media are for. Or so it seems. Malnutrition, starvation, lack of shelter, clean water supply, acid rain, refugee relief, soil erosion, land mines, AIDS, the Plague, terrorism, war, and all those other things you read, see, and hear.
I hope Bucky as a tribute to the way he dealt with his worldly issues is granted more than a lame quasi sci-fi appreciation of the functionality of his geodesic domes, and as a name bearer for some kind of molecular construction (bucky ball, fullerene), or as a solely recognized inspirator for a free-handout computer game (Sim city) for each new Macintosh computer. I know that you will Fullerene completely on this issue with me!
o Self with others : imaginary and real damage
‘Self’ is old. Others are ancient. When we grow up we are instructed to think of others. Socialisation it is called. Learning. Self cannot exist without some kind of learning involved. If you don’t pay enough attention it will turn out that Others are the keepers of the space of what learning deals with. They are the measure and intensity of learning as a daily routine. They are also the terrorists that blow up your kids, pollute your drinking water, bombshell your shed, rape your loved-ones. So it is a right thing to be aware of the possible danger of one inflicting damage or hurt onto others, it is good to think consequences. But consequences are also speculative; to be determined. It is exactly that spare space that allows us to not to render space in junk space. (Addicted to ‘Work’?) Lives depend upon this. Or as I picked up the other day :
‘Why not regard The Uncontrolled as an aesthetic quality : the lack will sure have some form. ‘
Before he could tell me what he meant he left.
Spare space, blanks, space for projection, interpretation, space for games
I just finished working on a film based on two monologues of Sylvia Kristel in which she speaks about the time she lived in Paris. The two monologues were recorded one year after another. Two versions of the same story, the same events but a different experience. In both versions she speaks with an ironic distance about things that happened in that period, without interpreting the events or herself. The stories describe a surface. Yet between the lines you feel the history and drama. It’s up to the spectator though to fill this in. People asked me if I edited a lot in the text. I took out some parts where she talks too much of Los Angeles or Amsterdam, other cities where she lived, but for the rest I kept the text as it was. The only thing I often did was making the silences slightly longer. First of all because she spoke incredibly fast but also to create space for the viewer to read between the lines. I also put blanks, white film, between images: to create space to breath and to project on something which wasn’t yet filled in, white film as image.
Panoramic Portraits also describes surfaces and plays with the idea of blanks and interpretation. The phrases of different categories disappear when clicking on one category leaving blank spaces, and new information in the form of links and quotes linked to the phrased of the one category you clicked on appear on the right. I find it personally more easy to read the descriptions in the different categories then in the full portraits. Because of the blank spaces one doesn’t have the feeling to have to read a whole page, the eye travels over the screen picking up the phrases more like images. The blanks, this spare space, gives space for interpretation. Interpretation like you described in the sense of ‘conveying the viewpoints and assumptions that provide the angle from which the subject matter is approached’.
As we already discussed, interpretation and reflection play an important role in this project, but the group of people who use it for this is small. (In dialogue 4, I described who are roughly speaking the groups that connect to the project.) The problem of the public space of the internet is that in order to attract people to visit and to come back to one’s website there has to be a general topic like ‘Feminism’ or ‘September 11th’ on which people feel a need to express their opinions or the website has to be already part of a community like the diary sites for instance or blogs of certain well-known people or people who create their own community by being on line about 24 hours a day. The motor has to be embedded in the way people use the search machines or live on the web. In Panoramic Portraits the motor is me, it’s my interpretation of those people. The interaction in the Grahamesque way only takes place within a small group (see description in dialogue 4). It does reflect on what a network is through the different persons and their links and as a work of reflection this works for me. But since it’s a research project in-progress on the internet as public space we have to keep questioning this aim from all the different angles. So to speak with you ‘How to design something that ‘works’? How to live?’ How to make things accessible?’ The thought of Fuller that making a game would do the trick isn’t bad.
Up till now I didn’t want people to intervene in the content of the website, in the descriptions, to be able to develop my own language in this. Now that I have eight portraits and different updates I think there’s enough information to form a basis of a possible game. As a result of the insert I made in dialogue 4, I recently created a self-portrait based on the descriptions of other people portrayed and designed in the same way as the other portraits with their descriptions and their links ( it should be on the site next week).
Similarly other people could use the other portraits as a game to create their own portrait or other possible portraits. It could be called something like ‘Self-portraits through Others’. Of course this would only work if within the project a tool is available by which people can create their own portrait based on the descriptions and links they find in the different portraits. And to which they could eventually add their own links and descriptions. I’ll explore this further.
Self-with-the-Other, present or imaginary
Your quote from R.D. Laing about metaperspectives made me think of what Chloé Martin said in her talk about my work at the presentation at Jan Mot’s gallery: "When she was working on Panoramic Portraits, Manon de Boer asked me to send her some links from the Web, a frame of reference. So I’ve taken a look at my Favourites to see what was available there. I didn’t tell her, but I didn’t find anything that fitted me there. Not that there was something shameful to mention, but these indices of my crude self were of no interest to present to others. So I’ve been looking for other links. It is clear that my surfing was quite conditioned by Manon, the addressee of the links. In ‘The Prisonnière’, Proust suggests interestingly that when two close people are together, the beliefs characterising the duo float in the air. What is behind this is the idea that the presence of the Other, physical or imaginary, conditions the subset of beliefs we are entertaining and which will determine the direction of the stream of consciousness and actions. The Self doesn’t think the same thing when he is alone (The Self-Alone), or when he’s Self-with-the-Other, present or imaginary. Consequently, the Self-Alone doesn’t think, doesn’t make choices in the same way as the Self-with-the-Other." (Chloé Martin)
As the representation of the Self is influenced by the presence of the Other (present or imaginary) one could also say that each image one has of the Other is a reflection of the Self.
Insert
(Self-portrait composed with the descriptions I made of the other people portrayed)
I see the people I love as endless worlds to explore and slowly get to know - feel that truth is installed in the relation with the ‘other’, not elsewhere - consider W. Gombrowicz’ book ‘Ferdydurke’ an important point of reference - like Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ for its sharp, psychoanalytical portrayal of human relationships - live in Brussels - am curious about and interested in working with other people - like Francis Alÿs’ work, especially in the way he starts with ordinary experiences, and was happy to read in an interview with him that he sees it as quite natural that not all collaborations are successful - feel biographical facts are killing the truth - am transparent - am between 30 and 40 years old - studied at the Rijks Academy in Amsterdam - am a multimedia artist - don’t surrender easily to group directives - have a free and independent mind - am looking for passion, lightness, freedom and truth - listen to everything from Glen Gould piano music to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - find that listening to the vibes of Roy Ayer’s music evokes happy memories of my youth in the 60’s and 70’s - feel a happy sense of nostalgia coming over me when in bars music of the 80’s is being played - one of my favourite films is the naturalistic film noir crime classic ‘The Asphalt Jungle’ by John Huston - and another film classic I like is ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Stanley Kubrick - like to wear big sunglasses - spent two months in Los Angeles with Oscar in 2001 - see in Los Angeles a metaphor for lightness, agility, projection and fiction - love to drive through Los Angeles on Sunday mornings while listening to ‘Someone Out There’ by Joe Frank - like to spend time talking and laughing with friends - made the book ‘Oscillations’ together with Annemiek, Chloé, Maureen, Daan - after a long period of mainly communicating by e-mail with friends recently rediscovered the pleasure of the telephone conversation - am often glad to be a woman - like clothes and support Belgian design as far as my finances allow me - like cats - have a strong desire to fully experience every single day of life - feel in a heavenly state of rest when my thoughts can fan out in all directions without feeling a need to give form to them and when the restlessness of the outside world has no grip on me
Public Space
What Laing describes as metaperspectives, what can be experienced in works as Dan Graham’s ‘Performance/Audience/Mirror’ (1977) and what Chloé describes as Self-with-the-Other is for me within this project the very core of how the internet as public space relates to the individual user. The internet like other public spaces as the realm where the Self is inevitably confronted with the Other. But, as this Self on the internet has no body or voice that conveys unconscious signs and information one would rather control, this Self can more easily control his image and play consciously or unconsciously with those metaperspectives. This virtual space definitely gives more freedom to create different identities, as described by Sherry Tuckle. It also makes me conscious that I lack information (the uncontrolled) which I find interesting.
In Dan Graham’s performances one is confronted with the Self and the Other and with body and language: with words that are never able to reproduce everything one observes and with the partly uncontrolled signs of ones own body language In his installations or performances one cannot escape the other nor ignore one’s own reactions. A similar direct confrontation and therefore control over the audience is impossible in an artwork on the internet.
When I saw Dan Graham’s exhibition in Paris (the same you saw in Kröller Müller) I was truly surprised by the physical, spatial and mental impact of works like ‘Public Space/Two Audiences’, experiencing the impossibility of defining my own role as either spectator or actor. As you say, this work of Graham is both interactive and about interaction. Interaction is about this shifting of roles. So having to play different roles could be a strategy for interaction.
For Panoramic Portraits I divide the audience roughly in three groups. The first group, the people portrayed, are the ones who experience mostly these different roles and a kind of interaction. By acting, giving me information, and by being spectator of themselves, seeing the information they give mirrored in my interpretation of them. The second group, are people already interested in one or more of the people portrayed who come to the Panoramic Portraits site by searching on the internet for information about one of those people. They see their personal image of this person confronted with my interpretation and with a whole network of references around that person, a context of ‘Others’ who are of influence on the way the person portrayed represents him/herself. For them the experience is not so much a shift of roles but their image of the person is mirrored in the image other people have of him/her and his/her frame of reference (the relation to again many ‘others’).
The third group are people who visit the site because they know me as an artist or are interested in art on the internet or just come across it by chance. I think that they could look at this site in a reflective way or just go on, unless they somehow identify with one of those people or with links in their frame of reference.
Subtitles
This dialogue was meant to link the project to a wider frame of reference through your input and to make more transparent my thoughts and intentions. Because it’s a work-in-progress it also gives space to reflect on what’s going on while making it. Like you said in your first document the word that we should use more often is 'and' in the correspondences between the written and the meant, the said and done, the said and written, the read and seen. In this sense this dialogue can function as subtitles for the work, since subtitles add another layer, translating while the original language and voice are still there (unlike ‘dubbing’ which takes away information, the original voice)
Maybe this is not exactly an answer to your question what the strategy would be when considering this dialogue as subtitles for the work. But what do you think is a good strategy to develop this dialogue as subtitles for this project?
Manon