Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Telepresence Art
Telepresence implies the participants who experience the remote action of the environment of cyberspace, which dissolving geographical boundaries. Because of that, art can confine between multiple places in real time, but not just in local space.
Eduardo Kac introduces Telepresence Art in the 80’s and 90’s. Basically, he creates a connection between imaginary and reality world. His work encourage users to experience the communication in personal interaction, functionality, and responsibility of a define purpose of Multimedia. For example, the project called Telerobots allows the participants in city A to control a telerobot in city B. Again, this real time interactive installations, robotics and telecommunication really presents what telepresence is about, while the users immerse in the cyberspace as they enter the virtual image of the partnership between man and machine.
Telepresence and virtual reality can only correspond when the participants immerse into the cyberspace which they can remotely control telerobot and receive feedback from their teleactions. Due to that idea, geographic location, size, color, materials can all take place as one image and that image will be the users who experience the virtual space in real time. This similar idea also relates the projects of Ken Goldberg’s Telegarden and Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Galloways’ Hole in Space. Overall, a screen can be a bridge that builds up another space of a new vision possibility, while users manipulate the environment.
Next, users have the power to control the virtual space as a two way interaction between human and machine, but there are some critical points among its purpose. For example, people might be curious if the reality can make telepresence more interesting than just virtual reality. I think participants will be more exciting if the virtual space really exists. They want to feel that they are really handling the virtual environment while also handling the reality. Not only that, the intention of users getting into a new visual environment will be an expectation. The impact of interest leads from a powerful feedback or result. They want to know what they can do or feel in that space. Lastly, the experience of telepresence can be seen as an “imagination” from the users. They see and feel the virtual image through new human technology, and those are mainly psychological impact. In fact, the users who deal with telepresence can not have a direct physical contact towards the virtual space.
Lastly, telepresence art has achieved a new level of human experience though art and technology. The users are able to change the art in their vision of space while they are in that space. Indeed, telepresence leads art out from tradition as it narrow all the possibilities down into an image.
