Author: MK

I recently spent two weeks in France, partly in Paris and partly in a town of 800 in the Poitou-Charentes region.

Paris has been written about so extensively elsewhere that I could hardly add more insight, so it will suffice to say that I enjoyed it immensely, and that the only surprise was that the Parisians themselves were not more fashionable (Londoners are still the street fashion champions, in my opinion.) Here is a photo taken from the {{popup mk_ferriswheel.jpg accordion 400×300}}Ferris wheel near the Tuileries gardens, as part of my attempt to include Ferris wheels as content on this blog as often as possible.

As for the art festival in the tiny town of Chizé, my week there passed in a dream-like way, where it felt as though we had been airdropped in to participate in some kind of Survivor-like arrangement, and that surely camera crews would pop up at any moment to register our resilience in the face of changing schedules, failing tech, idiosyncratic shop hours, precarious availability of fresh vegetables, and tolerance of {{popup accordion.jpg accordion 400×300}}constant accordion music.

Certainly the life of this festival was provided by a group called “Arts et Toits”, who were basically hippie squatters that {{popup artsettoits.jpg former boulangerie 400×300}}took over a building in the centre of town. Their antics were consistently entertaining, whether it was creating a {{popup ball.jpg giant ball 400×300}}giant ball to obstruct roads in different areas of town, or creating a web of {{popup tapeweb.jpg web 400×300}}packing tape that trapped {{popup tapeweb2.jpg help 400×300}}innocent bystanders. Come to think of it, a lot of their tricks relied on obstructing pathways. They also made crepes and ran a bar, and for this their presence was also much appreciated.

I was at my happiest when sitting next to a {{popup mk_wired.jpg wired 400×300}}big pile of cables that happened to have The Internet running through them, photographic hippie antics, or getting to know the people in town for the festival.

The hardest part was getting out of town, since no bus or train goes there. Eventually two ladies in matching hats driving a big van agreed to drive to Niort, the closest town that has a rail station, and I was soon enroute to Paris.

We took our flight to France from Mirabel Airport (YMX) in Montréal. Airports generally interest me because of their nature as transitory spaces. The unpleasantness of the tasks that await you at the airport, such as being searched, waiting in long lines, and hauling baggage, are partially cloaked by the cheery displays at duty-free shops, a hot cup of coffee from a familiar chain, or some other strategically placed item, such as a piece of public art. The conversion of airports, and the attendant waiting experiences within, into opportunities for shopping, drinking, and other diversions, seems simultaneously opportunistic (we have a captive audience) and sympathetic (we have a tired and cranky audience, so the least we can do is offer them a coffee.)

At Mirabel Airport however, the airport itself is sufficient diversion from the acts of waiting in line and being submitted to search. The airport is massive; when it went into service in 1975, its’ operations zone of 7,000 hectares made it the largest airport in the world. At that time, all international flights, and many domestic flights, were transferred from Montréal’s other airport, then named Dorval(1), to Mirabel. Mirabel’s construction was somewhat controversial, because it was an expensive project and was built on expropriated farmland that is far from downtown Montréal. Despite these two arguments, under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, this large-scale airport was constructed and touted as a symbol of Montréal’s bright future. Two busy airports signified economic prosperity and also Montréal’s perceived importance on a global scale.

Now, Mirabel {{popup mirabel2.jpg emptychairs 400×300}}stands nearly empty, and it’s a long, quiet walk along the departures level, where you might look down and see {{popup mirabel1.jpg baggage 400×300}}rows and rows of inactive baggage carousels. The grandiosity of the vision that was behind the airport’s construction is apparent both in scale and in materials – a huge expanse of glass affords a view of what was to be a bustling runway.

This tranquil stroll through the airport allowed me time to think about what it will become now, since the last passenger airline, Air Transat, is due to leave the airport before the end of this year. Apparently the airplane and rail-car manufacturer Bombardier is going to take it over and convert it into a factory. A more interesting, though fanciful, option might be for it to remain much as it is today, as a sort of museum or monument. A monument to what, I can’t say exactly – some combination of airport design, boundless optimism, 70s style, and Trudeaumania, though not necessarily in that order. A transitory space that is unable to transport you anywhere, except into a deeper analysis of our expectations of these types of spaces.

(1) In a curious and controversial gesture, given Mirabel’s failure as an airport and the fact that Mirabel was Prime Minister Trudeau’s initiative, the other, more successful airport in Montréal, Dorval, was renamed Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in 2003.

Sifting through the bookmarks in my inbox on del.icio.us, I clicked on a link that a friend had added, and this led me to the Mine Control website.

I remembered seeing the work of this collective at Eyebeam’s Beta Launch ’03 show. They showed Shadow, a lovely installation piece, where a disembodied shadow projected on the ground is able to interact with viewers as they approach it. It reacted appropriately to gestures cast in its direction – recoiling at punches, running away when chased, et cetera. It had an economy to its aesthetic and interaction that was quite appealing.

With this positive memory in mind as I continued scanning the Mine Control website, I decided to check out some of their newer work. Hoping for more of the same beautifully simple interactive work, I was instead incredibly disappointed by descriptions of their more recent efforts, entitled “Calder” and “Mondrian”.

As you might imagine, these pieces are derivative works of those two famous artists. In the case of each piece, the viewer is able to “create” a representation of a Mondrian-like painting or Calder-type mobile by touching a canvas.

My gut instinct upon reading about these two pieces and viewing the video footage available on the website is that while these pieces are cool party tricks, art they are not, and for several reasons. The role of the viewer has become so dumbed-down as to render them almost useless. This is in stark contrast to the relatively complex levels of interaction possible in Shadow.

Secondly, and I hope not to appear too old-fashioned here, but please keep your hands off the classics, unless you have a new critique to offer. Though the Mine Control website asserts: “Create your own composition in 10 seconds!”, I’m here to tell you that not everyone can create work with the same originality as Calder or Mondrian, and the “10 seconds” assertion only cheapens the act of creation further. I suppose anyone can create a meal in 10 seconds as well, by inserting a TV dinner into the microwave, but removing a wrapper and pressing “Start” doesn’t make you Emeril Lagasse, or turn your dinner into a pecan-crusted redfish.

Applying this “paint by numbers” effect to to the work of two great artists is an insult to their legacy. They arrived at their places in art history through a lifetime of creative investigation. To reduce their life’s work to a “style” that can be replicated by Joe Viewer waving his hands in front of a rear-projection screen strikes me as very sad. Should I be able to wave a piece of chalk in front of a chalkboard and come up with the Theory of Relativity? How would people snicker if they waved their hand over a keyboard and the work of great scientists simply appeared on a computer screen, as though they had authored it? The difference is, the work of great scientists is respected and even when “A Brief History of Time” appears on audio book and with a Cliff’s Notes companion, people still don’t imagine that anything less than a very gifted person arrived at those scientific conclusions. Why is the life work of artists valued less? And seen as easily replicated, as part of a game or trick?

Perhaps this is because the folks behind Mine Control don’t have any art training, and therefore don’t appreciate the complexity of art and its creation, and how at its best, creative acts in the art world are as worthy of awe as the latest scientific breakthrough. I am actually not surprised that the Mine Control folks don’t have art training, and perhaps I’m somewhat relieved. (I would have some serious questions for our art education system if they did – were they sleeping in both History of Art 101 and Theory of Art 101?)

Lastly, these two pieces signify what is wrong with interactive art in a broader sense, and why interactive art continues to receive lukewarm reception in the contemporary art circuit. With such disrespect for masters, how can the contemporary art world take interactive “art” seriously? Some pieces, digital or otherwise, that involve imitation of masters, are extremely effective and offer a critique that advances dialogue about artmaking. When, instead, the work offers no critique, but a simple aping of an artists’ style combined with oversimplified interaction that allows Joe Viewer to act as though they are creating a Mondrian-like piece, I can sadly understand why some contemporary art curators and critics have given up on interactive art.

So I implore the folks at Mine Control: Bring back the simple aesthetics and complex interaction design of the Shadow piece. Let Mondrian and Calder rest in peace. And please show some respect for the art world by taking into consideration the history and theory that underpins it, if you are going to continue to call yourselves artists.

I am in the process of completing a small project as part of my Master’s programme at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

My exploration of the Stenomask (a voice silencing device used primarily in courts of law) and voice recognition software as devices for performance will culminate in the publication of my thesis and a final exhibition in 2005. For now I am completing “micro-projects” to explore various applications of the Stenomask device, the performance of the voice recognition software that I use in conjunction with it, and mapping the errors and \\pertes\\ that occur in the HCI (human-computer interaction).

For this micro-project, “Before and After the Law/Avant et Après la Loi”, a group of eight participants were asked to create a personal voice model which customizes the computer to understand their voice, and then recite the text “Before the Law” by Franz Kafka to the computer. The participants recited the text into my Stenomask device, which was connected to my computer and created an automatic text transcript of what they read. Even with the personal voice model in place, inevitably errors occurred in the computerized translation of voice to text.

The link between the Stenomask and Kafka’s story occurs on two levels. The first link is clear: both the device and the story evoke a general image of the law. The second link is present in the content of the story and the manner in which the Stenomask/software combination function. The final line of the text by Kafka reveals that while that main character has been waiting in vain for access to the law, the door he has been waiting at was created just for him, and now that the character is at the end of his life, the door will be closed. This poetic betrayal of a door being closed that was intended just for him is mirrored in the errors created by the use of the Stenomask, which is also customized for a single user. When dictating into a court reporter’s device, even with a customized voice model, an accurate rendition is impossible. In the story, access to the law, even by a door intended for a specific person, is impossible.

Portraits of the participants with the Stenomask device, and transcripts of the texts that their readings produced, with the errors highlighted, will be bound into an artist’s book.

Supplements (will open in pop-ups or a new window):
– Link to the short story, “Before the Law”, by Franz Kafka.
– {{popup gabe_steno.jpg stenoportrait 300×465}}One of the portraits that will be featured in the book.
– {{popup btl1.gif transcription 400×400}}A sample of the distorted text produced at one of the readings.