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Authors: |
Grau, Oliver ;Ingeborg Reichle | |
Title: |
Legend, Myth and Magic in the History of Telepresence | |
Keywords: |
telepresence, telecommunication, artificial life, virtual reality, history of utopias | |
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Abstract: |
Telepresence combines three
technological principles: robotics, telecommunication, and virtual reality. The historical evolution of these technologies is wrought with distinctly mythical, magical and utopian connotations. Telepresence unites the timeless dream of "artificial life" with the aesthetic tradition of virtual realities and telecommunication technologies with their mystical predecessors. The history of media has always been the history of its utopias that shine forth the transgressive human endeavour. The quality of Telepresence's actual media phenomenology can only be characterised with historical adequacy in comparison to its predecessors and their by and large subconscious sub-history. Three historical lines of development will be discussed on interrelated levels: a) The "Archaeology of the Robot": The idea of artificial automations reaches back to antiquity and had attained actualisation as early as the sixteenth century. (Androids, Robots, Software Agents, A-Life) b) "Telecommunication": The pre-history of the "idea" stepping out of the human body and by means of other media travelling to other places: apocryphal, mystic and canonised writings - the idea of omnipresence - Hermes Trismegistos, the Myth of Electricity. (We will examine developments in the Thirties, in particularly, the Italian Futurists, Marinetti, who envisioned a cyborglike telesensoric metal-body), Norbert Wiener, who published 1964 the idea of copying knowledge, psychic character and consciousness of people and sending it with telegraph lines in networks. c) The "virtual optical presence" that places the observer "in" the image and allows for suggestive visions of picturesque journeys -- as in the movement of the "Sacri Monti" (1496-~1600), Agippa von Nettesheim's (1529) and Athanasius Kircher's journeys to distant places through mirrors (1646). Also representative of this phenomenon are travels through time and space in public Panoramarotundas, Edison's "Telephonoscope" (1879) as well as the current fantasy of the fusion of man and computer as envisioned in VR-Art. Combining these archetypal utopias the second part characterizes the media induced epistemology of Telepresence. The utmost direct possible fusion of all the senses with a virtual image machine produces the suggestive impression of intimate bodily closeness for the spatially distant observer. Represented as avatar in the animated image, he/she is electronically present at light-speed, via Robot, possibly at several locations simultaneously. The "Conquest of Illusive Omnipresence" includes for the first time, the means to effect the objective interactively from a distance and at the same time causes the deterioration of psychic/reflexive distance. Thus, Telepresence unfolds epistemologically as a classical paradox. As example I will discuss the Telepresence-Installation "Terra Present-Terra Past" from ART+COM, 1998. |
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| Grau, Oliver oliver.grau@culture.hu-berlin.de
Kunsthistorisches Seminar der Humboldt-University Berlin Oliver Grau is Art Historian and
works in a research program at the Humboldt-University of Berlin on the History and Theory
of Virtual Reality which is financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Involved in
various exhibitions and festivals, he has published many articles and lectured widely in
the field of VR-Art in international conferences (German Society of Aestetics-Hannover,
CAiiA/Newport 97, ISEA/Chicago97, German Arthistorian Conf., etc). After studying Art
History, Archeology, Italian Literature and BA at the Universities of Hamburg, Siena
(Italy) and Berlin.1994 MA, Die Sehnsucht, im Bild zu sein (studies on Artist, Artwork and
Onlooker in the Panorama and in Cyberspace). Extensive research trips took him through
Europe, Asia, Ozeania and America. Ingeborg Reichle Humboldt-University Berlin Ingeborg.Reichle@culture.hu-berlin.de |
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