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Authors:

 Robbins, Christiane.

Title:

 Amidst the White Noise ............

Keywords:

 communication , psychoanalytic "Real", simulated human emotions

Abstract:

 This proposal presents a media-based installation project examining an engagement with the computer which elicits and questions a number of issues pivotal to our culture's relationship - and the reinvention - to technology.

This project attests to evidence in institutional discourses of what is termed or coded as the Real - the legal and medical use of visual evidence to document and decode the limits of human subjectivity. The notion of the psychoanalytic "Real" evidences that point at which discursive and practical control falter. It is science's failure to know any object in its entirety that incites a flurry of interpretation and impetus to codify the Real. This proposal examines the degree to which computer renderings, video and other visual texts are conventionally used in clinical, laboratory and courtroom settings to demonstrate where the human subject simultaneously emerges and collapses. The determinants of this recognition also point to the narrow casting of subjectivity that is inherent in technology - in other words the narrow definitions and demographics of its target market are fully revealed.

However, in this installation the human subject re-emerges as a technologically rendered subjectivity contingent upon one's relationship to the computer and one that is subject to W3 observance and scrutiny ( speaking of a panopticon!) . In other words, all of this data and resulting representations will be posted on the W3 White Noise site. This, in turn, offers the opportunity of an examination of the phenomenon of disclosure and self-revelation including: ethical considerations, tensions between memory and history, alternative formal strategies, the inevitable blurred boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, the maker/watcher relationship, and the quandaries of turning ones life into a spectacle.... our proverbial 15 minutes is now available to all those who have access to a computer and web site authoring capabilities.

In recent years, there have been numerous research studies about computer human interaction. Arguably, speech is one of the most efficient communication media and it includes several types of factors regarding speaker, context, emotion and so on. This is especially true of computer human interaction, recognition of nonverbal information and states of speech, such as emotion, stress, dialect, and accent. In this installation, I present an attempt to model the emotional condition inherent to human speech and to utilize that condition as a means of subverting the technological imperative. This will be supplemented by programmatic strategies common to the employment of face recognition.

In tandem, the questions administered in this Installation will be presented by the computer - a computer upgraded with simulated human emotions . In other words, certain emotional states have been programmed into the computer in order to facilitate specific "appropriate" responses by the computer to the emotional state of the user. These responses will be based on a pre-programmed set of recognition signals based on predetermined expressions of anger, happiness, etc. This points to the rather dubious scientific conclusion that humans may benefit emotionally in the short term from computers that respond in socially appropriate ways toward their emotions, even though the machine is not capable of feeling.

To be clear, this engagement with the computer pulls into question a number of issues pivotal to our culture's relationship ( and the reinvention thereof) to technology, for example:

) It convincingly points to evidence in institutional discourses of what is termed or coded as the Real - the legal and medical use of visual evidence to document and decode the limits of human subjectivity. The notion of the psychoanalytic "Real" evidences that point at which discursive and practical control falter. It is science's failure to know any object in its entirety that incites a flurry of interpretation and impetus to codify the Real. This installation will examine how computer renderings, video and other visual texts are conventionally used in clinical, laboratory and courtroom settings to demonstrate where the human subject simultaneously emerges and collapses. The determinants of this recognition also point to the narrow casting of subjectivity that is inherent in technology - in other words the narrow definitions and demographics of its target market are fully revealed. The design of the actual physical space will mirror these settings and a mediated performative aspect - the delivery and exchange of the question and answer session between the member of the audience and the computer. The interface of the computer will speak to the simulated emotions that are resident in the programming of the host computer thereby raising issues of call and response/disclosure and self-revelation

2.) However, in this installation the human subject will re-emerge as a technologically rendered subjectivity contingent upon one's relationship to the computer and one that is subject to W3 observance and scrutiny ( speaking of a panopticon!) . In other words, all of this data and resulting representations will be posted on the W3 White Noise site. This, in turn, offers the opportunity of an examination of the phenomenon of disclosure and self-revelation including: ethical considerations, tensions between memory and history, alternative formal strategies, the inevitable blurred boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, the maker/watcher relationship, and the quandaries of turning ones life into a spectacle.... our proverbial 15 minutes is now available to all those who have access to a computer and web site authoring capabilities.
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One of the primary goals of this project is to provide us ( and that "us" sometimes takes on staggering proportions ) with a vision - a distinct cultural role for art to inhabit before its full retreat to a commodity based system. It acknowledges Robbin's general concern of how an individual artist - in tandem with her communities and audiences - is attempting to reposition herself in order to posit an authenticity and integrity for this project's contextualization. An engagement with a wider, more diverse and in some instances, a more unsullied public is of paramount importance.

Her twelve year artistic practice and work with media, technology and cultural analysis, her work as an activist and her professional role as a university professor, administrator, curator and programmer in these areas, assures this project of a potentially tremendously wide public audience(s). And this is what is precisely demanded by our social imperative - an incisive on-going cultural discussion that can exist
Robbins, Christiane. crobbins@mail.sdsu.edu Digital Media and Visual Culture San Diego State University, San Diego, CA Christiane Robbins is an artist and scholar working at the intersection of the studio practice, digital media and critical theory components of Visual Arts/Media/Technology production. She composites the roles of studio artist and contemporary theorist with a focus on the emergence of visual-cultural studies as an outgrowth of the late 20th century cultural legacy of New Genres. Currently, Robbins is completing " ( Death ) A Vous de Jouer = (death) your move " , a project engaging the possibilities of narrative within the W3 environment and questions relating to chance and its relationship to the ubiquitous "gaming" strategies inhabiting the W3. Evoking the narrative revolving around the unexpected death of Roland Barthes while stepping onto on the streets of Paris, his theories proffered around assumptions of imagery, notions of mythologies and narrative will serve as a base from which this work advances. Also referenced is the omnipresent commodity corpse of Diana Spencer. We seem to be witnessing the regenerative inversion of the horrific life transfer suggested by Barthes as Diana's life becomes the wealth of the cadaver. This piece has been honored by its recent inclusion in the American Film Institute Digital Art's program. It has also been selected for inclusion in SPEED: Terminals: Considering the End Terminals: The Cultural Production of Death, a internet based virtual book of critical essays and an accompanying CD-ROM sponsored by the UC Inter Campus Arts. Through the assistance of a generous co-production grant from the Banff Centre for the Arts she has recently completed the single channel video " Amidst the White Noise ... My Fifth Amendment Privilege". This 'experimental docudrama' offers an intervention into the construction and discourse of technologically rendered whiteness, the discourse of race, the marketplace, and the specter of information circulating around our media-based events. The scope of this entire project includes single-channel video, installation, DVD and W3 site production. Chris's artistic practice has been internationally recognized in exhibitions such as Image World at the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY, the Berlin Film Festival, the American Film Institute's National Video Festival, VideoBrasil, the International Film and Video Festival-Budapest, Women in the Director's Chair, the Vigo International Film Festival and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Stedlijck Museum, Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Kitchen, NY, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Honolulu, the Oakland, Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the California Institute of the Arts, among many public, private and corporate collections, as well as having been the recipient of numerous awards and grants. Robbin's artistic projects more over extend beyond the purely aesthetic, the Fine Art system or the realm of entertainment/industry . Rather, they have served as catalysts of community(s), social movement and inter-cultural understanding during their creation, production and reception. With this in mind, Robbins has substantively contributed to a number of collaborative projects. In 1991 she was a co-director of one of the first global cultural projects to appear on the Internet "On-Line Against Aids ". This internationally acclaimed project was an all encompassing - visual art, installation, performance, and media/technology - site-specific project which offered alternative cultural and health perspectives to the Sixth International Conference on AIDS. Not only was this project located on the Net - Robbins also directed, curated and collaborated on a number of exhibitions, public installations, broadcasts and performances throughout the Bay Area, including Diamanda Galas's performance at Capp Street Project. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1989, a BA/MA in 20th Century American Art History (specializing in New Genres) and studio practice from the University of Wisconsin, and has studied at Harvard University. She has lectured extensively and taught a broad range of visual arts and media classes in the Schools of Fine Arts at the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Mills College and the California Institute of the Arts. During this period she was also active within the critical, museum and gallery communities, acting as a Curator and Cultural Producer, more recently serving as Executive Co-Director of New Langton Arts in San Francisco. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Visual Culture at San Diego State University and is a principal of CAPITAL Pictures, a research and development firm involved in Digital Media and Video located in San Francisco, CA.