FRIDAY!

Watch us live on ustream today! It's performance time. There won't be anything to watch unless YOU come on down! (just kidding there will be plenty to watch, but we'd love for you to come and participate!!)

ustream.com/channel/PROJECTEDintimacy

Day 4: Travis & Przemek: Daily Grind

      Today was day 4, a much simpler set up than last night.  Daily Grind was perhaps the most controversial work in the exhibit.  Made by Travis and Przemek in Berlin, it opened for us a window in the world of gay male cruising through the Apple Iphone application Grindr.  The artists set up a website replication of the app through which we could witness their communications with other gay men in their proximity.  The site allowed us to the see the faces and stats of the people displayed.  Each profile contains a photo, age, and distance from the user.  Optional information included was relationship status.  This work challenged notions of privacy on the internet and in telecommunication applications.  We often presume that because we are part of a small community of users or because we set our privacy settings to a certain level that we are safe from those we would wish to avoid.  In truth this is not the case, whether you are using a hand held device or online social networking, no matter what you do whatever you put "out there" will be catalogued and can be seen by people unknown to you without your consent.  Most likely the people accessing your information and history will be corporations and government departments, but you cannot know what they will be using it for.  

      Daily Grind also calls into question the nature of gay male culture and the question of sex versus romance.  On a certain level Grindr is designed for hook-ups and not necessarily lasting relationships.  This is an initial response and the truth may be that it is up to the various users to decide what they are using the application for.  The site also functions as a method for people who are mapping out their identity to explore gay sex with an assumption of privacy.  

    Many people are finding relationships through the internet and there is a certain level of success, I heard a statistic today that about 1 in 5 relationships have started off through various forms of internet communication.  This is yet another reality of the digital age.  People can and do truly forge intimate connections online and I am sure this will become a feature of smart phone use in the near future.  I wonder how much love for an individual you can have when your entire experience with them is mediated by a screen or does there come a point when all the chatting and photo sharing necessitates an in person meeting.  

     Daily Grind also allows us to see an example of people crafting an identity, in this case, from a limited amount of information.  Here the projected self is a sort of mating ritual where you exhibit your good looks to obtain gratification.  Your interaction will decide whether or not you're successful.  Is this any different than picking someone up in a bar or on the street, perhaps this offers increased efficiency to getting laid, you can figure out who is in your immediate proximity or if there is someone who is particularly attractive you can easily find out where they are before you meet them. 

     I am curious how people of other sexual orientations would respond to an application like this, whether they are lesbian, bisexual, or straight.  Gindr is an interesting application that might also have benefits to those who have certain requirements whether they are fetish tastes or ethnicity or religious beliefs.  Grindr is a way to sort out who are looking for and who you would like to avoid without necessarily being in the same room as them.   

    With Daily Grind Travis and Przemek have created a work of art that has the potential to start some very interesting discussions about privacy, romance, and the screening of sexual partners.  Unfortunately you will have to take my word for it as the website is currently offline.  Below I have added their artist statement to allow them to explain the work themselves, free of my analysis.  

Travis and Przemek
Daily Grind
Interactive HTML webpage, 2011


The work we create collaboratively addresses concepts of control in
male/male social interaction, and it is a reflection of the lives we
live. In the context of this exhibition, we are interested in
magnifying our interaction with Grindr - a new form of social activity
that we engage with on a daily basis. Grindr is a closed social
networking environment that operates on the iPhone and has been
created to facilitate sexualized male/male social interaction. The
cyberperformance consists of a constantly updated web re-creation
of our Grindr experience: chat history of the people we
communicate with, their photos, and their location away from us as
determined by GPS. By projecting this web page in a gallery setting,
the viewer will be able to have a one-way interaction with the
application, and be a voyeur into our private social interactions.

We are seeking to break the closed loop that exists within Grindr –
the perception of belonging to a semi-private social group of gay/bi/questioning
men that have the economic means to participate. The network
exists in a grey area between public and private, and it is under
numerous levels of corporate control. Users have an expectation of
privacy, but the closed network that they perceive to be “safe” can
easily be contravened. Every message and photo sent on Grindr has the
potential to be exposed to the outside world in many ways: the
receiving user can store and distribute the data by taking
screenshots, Grindr moderators can access all data sent and received,
and it is possible that Apple can also intercept this information.
In the context of this performance, the data perceived to be private by Grindr
users will be communicated to a broader audience in order to
reinforce its truly public nature.

Day 3: Zoe Koke & Molly O: Closer, Not Close Enough

    The third day of this exhibit was by far the most difficult and from the bottom of my heart I thank Helga for navigating such treacherous waters.  Our second performance was by Zoe Koke in Montréal and Molly O. in Brooklyn, NY.  Zoe and Molly read some of their favourite literature to each other in the bed-sheet forts of their youth lit by candles and flashlights over Skype.  The performance was an exploration of closeness through video chat.  The actual event was a fascinating exploration of the efficacy of video chat and the maintenance of friendship.  
     The scene in Gallery One One One was quite beautiful as we were setting up, there were screens, and an image of a cozy bedroom.  The battle started as soon as we tried to get everyone online together, it seems that this exceeded the level of complication we were expecting.  In the end we decided just to simplify our set-up so that we could get on with the performance.  Closer, Not Close Enough was expected to be one of the highlights of the exhibit, and we were very happy when the lights went off and the story telling began.  The closeness that one felt towards Molly and Zoe up on our screen was strange, but still very real.  For myself, the knowledge that these two people were in their own spaces far from us reading and communicating in real time was quite magical.  The actual spaces they occupied added a very sentimental feeling to the performance, even as we sat there in the slightly chilly gallery on slightly uncomfortable chairs.  Molly and Zoe communicated with text messages to each other, they wrote notes in notebooks and help them up the camera.  The ability to see their printing made the silent comments all the more meaningful and I think this is something to consider, type written text removes the real moment to moment emotional state of the author that an emoticon cannot replicate in any serious way.  So in the most traditional sense of the word, they communicated via text message.  
    The performance was fantastic, let's get that out there right now.  About fifteen minutes in the gods of the internet started to frown on us, connections began to collapse.  Initially there were minor glitches, Zoe's video froze, then Molly was disconnected, then both of them.  I can't tell you how or why this happened, I know very little about the workings of the internet, but there was a bit of scramble to get things back online.  Those in the audience who stayed on through this earned my total respect.  Andy Warhol once made a comment about how you should be sure to get all the scratches and dirt on a film that you can, so that you know that you're watching a film.  Well we knew we were dealing with the internet.  These glitches, seizures if you will, completely fascinated me in terms of our exploration of digital intimacy.  In addition I feel that they made the performance feel like a true contemporary art film, slightly excruciating.  But isn't this often the experience of video communication with a friend who lives so far away?  The awkwardness of lag, waiting for them to laugh at a joke as you wonder if you've completely offended them, or dealing with choppy video and sound distortion is now a part of our interaction with people.  These technological hiccups have been a part of our life since telecommunication came into existence.  So like the awkward silence, the true character of person comes through in how they handle these moments.   
      Online video chat is a beautiful thing, there really is nothing like seeing your friend laugh to make you feel better, but there is still something to be said for the equally intimate nature of letter writing, both have their own problems.  There is nothing that can feel quite as good as sitting across the table from them, but in lieu of that it is your choice and most of us would rather have them in front of us rather than hidden in their hidden in their handwriting.  

TONIGHT!!!

Tonight we have molly O. and Zoe koke performing live in Gallery One one One via Skype!!
Come down and check it out!!
If you are far away and/or unable to make it to the gallery watch this amazing performance at:
ustream.com/channel/projectedintimacy
It will be at 7.30pm

closer, not close enough

A performance by Zoe Koke and molly o.

It's too easy, in this age, to forget that writing and speaking are technologies in themselves.  Yet just as the written word and the spoken sentence have been modified by culture and circumstance to serve a specific purpose, so the various communications technologies of the past decade-- instant messaging, video chat, status updates- have begun to signify specific kinds of interactions.  Does Skype make you feel closer to you friend because you can see their face, or farther away because it reminds you of the distance between you?  We seek to re-imagine the space of the video chat by engaging each other from the smallest possible spaces in our homes, commemorating the flashlight-lit forts we made as children to share our stories.  In exchanging our favorite texts and reworking the relationship between previous technologies, we hope to illuminate the possibility for intimacy in a medium typically regarded as a poor, yet necessary, substitute for physical interaction.

Day 1: Cliff Eyland's New Media Class

    Today was the very first official day of Projected Intimacy, Cliff Eyland held his first year New Media class in the exhibition space of Gallery One One One.  The class was in costume and character for critiques of their vehicles of the future assignment.  The atmosphere was light and the crit took on a game show feel as each student presented their assignment to the laptop and projector.  
     Day I was not without difficulty, or at least what we thought were technical problems.  At first it appeared as though we only had about 20% of the sound we intended, so we struggled through that and it seems to have taken care of itself, if it was ever an actual problem.  
     It was clear that this was going to be an unusual class, having the professor and his students somewhat masked, sitting in a gallery with black walls and spot lights, and having themselves projected on the wall behind them.  Everyone seemed very aware that they were being watched, and had very little difficulty performing for the camera.  
     The issue of having no sound created an interesting dilemma for us as curators. What is the point of having a class if no one can hear the ideas being thrown around?  Technical difficulties are a ubiquitous element of the  internet and computers in general, so this speaks to an issue involved in online communication.  Perhaps the threat of disconnection, technical failure, is something that both the physical world and the online world share.  
    All through this project I have been considering the realities of how we portray ourselves on the internet and the fact that students came costumed and masked spoke to this in a very obvious way.  Yet, the personalities of the individual students could not be hidden and each one brought their own idiosyncrasies to the camera.  
     Energy was high in the room, and everyone seemed to enjoy this experience, or if they didn't they were excellent sports about it.  I think that the lesson was more than just their assignments, I hope that this experience left them with some questions about why it was necessary, or how this relates to the future of art making.  So often in art education the question of who the viewer is and how will different people respond to a work comes up in critical discussion.  The idea of the gaze is central to Projected Intimacy and each day will likely add a new layer to its exploration.  


For more on Cliff Eyland and Gallery One One One see the links below:


http://www.cliffeyland.com/


http://umanitoba.ca/schools/art/galleryoneoneone/info111.html

It begins...

We have begun today's set up. Expect a video shortly...

TOMORROW!

We are so excited for tomorrow!
The plan is that the gallery will be open from 1-6.
Ben Clarkson's work will be up from 1-3, and then Cliff Eyland's class will be in from 3-6.
Cliff's class will be streamed live through: ustream.com/channel/PROJECTEDintimacy
In the morning I will be uploading a video onto: youtube.com/user/projectedintimacy
Be sure to come down to the gallery, as well as enjoy our show from home!