For Immediate Release:
New installation at InterAccess challenges senseless technology.
Contact Mike Steventon create(AT)collaborative.ca 416 533 6244
Remembering in states of you,
the feeling of your bright light sound wave,
like a shaking timber.
Together we make a song to filter light and bathe.
Changing, resting, disappearing.
SenseBus is a collaboratively built, interactive sensory environment. It
uses a networking scheme that allows technologies found in the average home
to share sense information in a distributed network of sensory modules.
There is no central "brain". There are no screens, mice or keyboards.
Instead of the traditional individualism of the artist, the SenseBus group
chose a collaborative working process that mirrors the structure of the
artwork. The system senses and expresses through touch, light and sound in
interaction with visitors to the space.
Opening: Friday May 14th 6:00 PM
Artist's talk Saturday May 29th 2:00 PM
Gallery Hours Tuesday to Saturday 12PM - 5PM
Closes Saturday June 12th
InterAccess, 401 Richmond St.W., Suite 444
416 599 7206 www.interaccess.org/arg/sensebus
What does it look like? What does it do?
Using the type of microprocessors found in washers and dryers, SenseBus
involves the visitor in manipulating space and time by allowing them to
make changes in light and sound.
Two waist-high cylinders emit sound and vibration as they are pushed around
in the space. Sensors test for movement, speed, direction and proximity.
Another module senses vibrations, from people in the space, from activities
within the building and from external traffic. Theses vibrations are used
to modulate light waves which are projected onto the walls in concentric
circles. This light is sensed, transformed and expressed as sound back into
the local environment. While in motion one cylinder sends inaudible
vibration feedback to the person pushing it. These variables create an
interplay between tactile vibration, light and sound in the environment.
The system remembers a visit by changes in state that are caused by a
visitors interactions in the space, rather than by capturing data directly
from human physiology, in order to acknowledge human presence without
surveillance of individuals. These changed states are then experienced by
the next visitor, who in turn makes their own changes.
How was it made and by whom?
A basic requirement of communication is a common language. The SenseBus
networking protocol was developed by artists to allow low tech electronic
devices to share sense information in a distributed network. Coherent
communication between artworks on the network could only be achieved if the
artists were in close communication about their intentions. Instead of the
traditional individualism of the artist, the SenseBus group chose a
collaborative working process that mirrors the structure of the artwork.
What is truly unique about SenseBus is the way in which it was made. A
dozen artists have created an artwork that is conceptually, physically and
operatively one system. Skill sharing, ideas sharing and consensus are
central elements which were integral to the realisation of the SenseBus
installation. This practice was developed in a series of weekly workshops
that began in November 1998. The workshop evolved the SenseBus installation
though three phases:
- research, theory, and critique of technology as it relates to culture
- conceptual development of the ideas
- realisation of the ideas through the construction of the SenseBus
installation
Initially about 50 people responded to the call for participation in the
SenseBus project. By March a dozen people committed themselves to meet even
more regularly to build the SenseBus installation. This group is very
diverse in their backgrounds, many had little or no experience with
electronics, everyone came with a desire to learn by sharing skills
knowledge and ideas.
What is the social context?
The SenseBus Group has chosen technology as a medium for cultural
expression, not because it is new or good or bad, but because it is
undeniably a part of our culture.
Because we have grown distrustful of the mediated experience our methods of
working with technology reflect a move away from communication though
representations of reality and instead to things that can be known
directly, though the senses. This for us is the opposite of the hyper
mediated world of virtual reality, which is of course, a nonsense
environment.
Technologies are not simply the materials they are made of, more it is the
purposes to which they are put. We, as members of a technological society,
need to know not so much the actual circuits of the technology, but more
the relationships of power, control & pseudo control embedded in the
technology and the purposes to which it is put.
Initially we asked the question: Do you want your technology to be more
sensual? We found this question intriguing because of its
simplicity/complexity. We concluded that while more sensual technology
could make our use of it more pleasurable, it could also be more seductive
and more manipulative if it was controlled by those we could not trust. The
key is control and trust. Too often we trust technology without any basis
for doing so; for example street security cameras.
The speed of technological advance often forces us into acceptance of
technologies without due consideration of the social, legal, and health
issues they raise. Unchecked technological development without regard for
social implications is not inevitable. For its part, the resistance of the
art establishment in considering the role of technology in art has lead to
a severely retarded cultural critique of even yesterdays technologies.
This has partly come about because today's technology is often shrouded in
mystery, because its workings are not immediately apparent, because it is
often fragile and in need of technical attention, because the materials and
processes are unfamiliar, because a new language is necessary to discuss
it,
because it is difficult to show and sell, and because artworks that engage
with it are often temporal and impermanent.
The SenseBus project furthers the debate not so much through
intellectualised analysis, as would be the role of academia, but rather
through practice. The SenseBus Installation represents a network of people
expressing themselves as a group through a digital network with an artist
designed input and output methodology. This exercise is an examination of
what we see as being important in networked art which is in turn a
microcosm of what is important and necessary to us as a network of people.
Mike Steventon
SenseBus 1999
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