A RARE BIRD AT THE OLYMPICS

Cynthia Goodman

1995 was hailed as "The Year of the Internet" in the coverstory of the year end issue of Newsweek. The pervasiveness of this relativelynew technology is inescapable. Nevertheless, for many, the conduits forglobal interconnectivity on this worldwide computer network were initiallydifficult to grasp. The sudden, ubiquitous rise of the network was overwhelming,and traveling into the unknown terrain of Cyberspace seemed mysterious.However, demystification is occurring with similar velocity. Although someadults have been tentative in their embrace of the world Wide Web, childrenrace home from school to communicate online with new friends from all overthe world.

Eduardo Kac uses electronic media in his innovative work in holography,telecommunications events and conceptual art. Kac is one of eight artistswhose work was selected for the exhibition "Out of Bounds: New Workby Eight Southeast Artists" organized by Nexus Contemporary Art Centerin Atlanta in collaboration with the Atlanta Committee for the OlympicsGames. Kac has a long history of interest in telecommunications-based artworkand dates his first such work to 1985 when he was still living in Rio deJaneiro.

You had an early interest in telecommunications and art. What wasyour first piece in this medium?

EK: In 1985, working with the phone company in Rio, I created what wetoday call a virtual gallery, enabling myself and a few other artists toplace works in a remote site to be accessed from different parts of thecountry. In fact, there were public terminals places by the phone companyin airports, shopping centers, universities.

When did you create your first public presentation involving theInternet?

EK: The first public presentation of the Ornitorrinco Project was inChicago in 1992 and it used the telephone network. There, people interactedwith the piece in one location and by doing so, manipulated the robot ina remote place. In 1994, working with Ed Bennett I created the first networkedtelepresence installation in which the robot was located in Chicago andpeople would control it from sites around the U.S. One of the unique thingsabout this was that the body of the telerobot was inhabited by more thanone person at the some time. As a consequence, they had to share the controlsdemocratically, seeing through the eyes of the robot at the some time.So they developed a sense of being together in that remote body. The visionwas shared through live digital video on the Internet with anybody in theworld who had access to the Internet. We had people coming online fromIreland, Canada, several American cities, Germany, Finland and other countries.

Do you approach your work on the Net in a different way than youdo in other mediums?

EK: Yes and No. I don't come to telecommunications and networking differentlyfrom the other work I do. All my work is concept driven, not so much mediadriven. It's not like I have a medium and see what I can do with it, butthe works follow a general interest I have in language and how communicationlies at the core of our very experience of the world.

Can you tell me about the work you created for the Olympics?

EK: When you enter the exhibition and see my work "Rara Avis, "you walk into a triangular room and immediately see a cage in the spaceand notice there is something not quite normal about it. Eventually youwill notice that there are two things in the cage: a group of small monochromaticbirds, and towards the back of the cage, a colorful, tropical, large beautifultelerobotic macaw.

What happens next?

EK: When you put on the VR headset, you project yourself into the bodyof the telemacaw. Several things happen at once. As you move your headto the left, headtracking moves the telerobotic head to the left. As youmove your head to the right, the telerobotic head is moved to the right.The macaw's vision is both in color and in stereo. What you see with yourleft eye is displayed on a large monitor so that other people in the exhibitcan see what's going on. It also goes to a live color interactive videoconferenceand to the MBone. What you see with your right eye is being fed live toa grayscale interactive videoconference and to the Web. In principle, anybodyanywhere in the world who has Internet access can see it. There are norestrictions. The vision system is being controlled by you in the gallery,so what people on the Net see pretty much responds to your physical motion.Voices coming from the Net are heard in the gallery.

Why do you now choose to create works on the Net, involving the public,rather than with groups of networked artists, as you did in your earlierwork?

EK: When the Internet finally became available, it became a naturalextension for me. The Internet is not comparable to the smaller parallelartists' networks that I had either initiated or participated in, becauseit is worldwide and involves a lot of other people that are not necessarilyartists. On the Net you can create pieces you couldn't create otherwise.You can create situations that are open and more democratic.

Originally published in Artist's & Graphic Designer's Market,F&W Publications, Cincinnati, 1997, pp. 22-23.

Cynthia Goodman is the former Director of the IBM Gallery of Scienceand Art in New York, where she organized the landmark "Computers andArt" exhibition. A world authority on digital art, Goodman is theauthor of Digital Visions: Computers and Art, which serves as a textbookin the field. She is currently organizing an exhibition of interactiveart for The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has edited and produced aCD-ROM, InfoART, published by ARTway and distributed by D.A.P. Publishers,New York.

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