0G_IN_maquinas&almas:Maquetación 1
26/6/08
16:25
Página 48
sive and generative nature of new media, in particular—which allows machine environments to “speak to us, understand us, and perceive our behavior”—has led to perceived fusions of man and machine or projections of human qualities onto machines, be it in a utopian or dystopian context. From scientific and pop-cultural speculations about machines with souls to the cyborgian fusion of organism and machine, the idea of machines with human capacities has been endlessly fascinating to philosophy, art, literature, science and science fiction throughout the centuries. While Souls & Machines does not aim to be a survey of new media art or the history of responsive art and human-machine interaction, the complex relationships between humans/machines and organic/digital systems seem to be one underlying narrative of the exhibition. At the core of these relationships are concepts of response and interaction—the latter being a term that has become almost meaningless due to its inflationary use for numerous levels of exchange. The models of interaction that form the basis of exchanges between humans and computers widely differ in conceptual and technological sophistication. A significant portion of interactive art can be summed up under the label of reactive art where the participant’s body is turned into an instrument (as Krueger would put it) whose movements and actions affect the environment. Input such as changing light levels, temperature, or sounds are also often used to trigger responses from a computerized environment. Yet another form of interaction is supported by technologized tools and “instruments” that the audience “plays” in order to elicit response. In many other works, interaction is based on enabling the audience to explore “databases” of preconfigured materials through seemingly infinite combinations. Yet another model is system interaction where elements of software systems themselves interact with each other (with or without audience) input. Considering the potential of the digital medium, there are still relatively few works that create open systems by allowing users a sophisticated reconfiguration or rewriting of the system itself or by relying on networked communication processes in challenging ways. The works in Souls & Machines use a range of approaches to interaction and response, commenting on relationships between humans and technology, the organic and the digital. While Ben Rubin’s and Mark Hansen’s Listening Post is not interactive in its physical manifestation, it displays response by filtering people’s contributions to public forums on the Internet according to semantic “movements” and “broadcasting” them across a grid of a multitude of small electronic screens. The interaction unfolds on the network rather than in the gallery environment. The textual representation of human response in Listening Post finds its counterpoint in the visual representation of Danny Rozin’s mechanical mirrors, which construct the image of the person standing in front of them in various materialities—from “trash” to laminated prints that mimic a hand-woven basket. As works of responsive art that use the body as instrument, Rozin’s mirrors explicitly play with the tension between the digital and analog/physical. The woven portraits of Weave Mirror, in particular, connect to the history of computing by referencing the famous textile loom invented in 1801 by Joseph Marie Jacquard. A predecessor of early computing machines, the Jacquard loom was the first machine to use punched cards and its inventor supposedly used it not only for weaving not only abstract patterns but also a portrait. The tension between the organic and the machine becomes most pronounced in the works of the group Amorphic Robot Works whose inflatable structures abandon the emblema48