DIGITAL BODY PERFORMANCE -PAUL VANOUSE

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~pv28/electart.html

Paul Vanouse 'Items 1-2000'

ITEMS 1-2,000: A CORPUS OF KNOWLEDGE ON THE RATIONALIZED SUBJECT
by Paul Vanouse, 1996

In 1988, I finished a concentration in pre-med studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. By this point, I was disenchanted and decided against the career because of varied issues surrounding the practice of medicine, especially in the US. These issues included the ethics of human and animal research; the rationalization and fracturization of the body underlying western medical understanding of the body; and the exclusive health care system of the US which the majority of its population cannot afford.

Items 1-2,000 collapses western medicine's fracturization of the body with industrial itemization techniques into the ultimate rationalization apparatus. A human body is half submerged in a block of wax, in a manner reminiscent of how biological specimens are fixed in a "microtome" (a machine which cuts these wax embedded specimens into slices often as thinly as 1 millimeter.) A sheet of glass rests several inches above the figure in a manner analogous to that of a cover slide used atop the cross sectional slices in microscopy. This glass is affixed with barcodes, running transversely across the glass, which correspond to internal organ locations of the figure underneath.

Participants interact with the work as anatomy students would a cadaver: They use a stainless steel barcode scanner much like a scalpelÑslicing horizontally across the figure to reveal the hidden target organ. The more familiar use of barcodes and scanning procedures however are not lost, and this surgical role blurs with that of cashierÑcommodifying and extracting value through the denial of the body as whole (rather a rational composite of itemized parts.) Each targeted anatomical region has an axial, transverse and saggital center, so that once the program accesses the correct axial slice, an arrow points to the correct x and y location within this Cartesian corpus. Every third scan the participant makes accesses a jarred recollection from my own experiences as a student in the anatomy morgue. These recollections are somewhat poetic and primarily address the phenomena of de-humanization of the corpse as it is de-constructed and subsequently re-configured through dissection. These musings attempt to de-construct the rationalization processes of western bio-medical practices and to discover a point of empathy with the subject.

The sliced human data-set used for Items 1 - 2,000 is exported from the National Institute of Health's Visible Human Project. CD-ROM. This was a multi-million dollar endeavor, in which a death-row inmate was given lethal injection, his internal cavities filled with latex, embedded in a wax-like gelatin, and sliced into 2,000 thin slices which were photographed and digitized. Certainly Foucault would have found the Visible Human project fascinating as the disciplined body of the prisoner is subjected to the ultimate surveillant process (minute dissection) and his body, essentially "drawn and quartered" in the ultimate spectacular punishment.1

The recollection movies I have created from varied image sources. Most of the overlaid, diagrammatic components are taken from anatomy student dissection manuals; other elements are scanned from my own sketchbooks (In 1988, near the end of my pre-med studies, I would often return to the anatomy lab after hours to make pen and ink drawings of the corpse); while others utilize other medical data sets which I have de-convolved using specialized bio-medical software such as Analyze, running on Unix workstations at Pittsburgh's Science and Technology Center. I have also used a Scanning Electron Microscope to create certain close-ups, which are used in the final recollection movie clip.

1. I'm referring primarilly to Foucault's Discipline and Punish text -- Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish., 2nd ed. trans. Alan Sheridan (Random House Inc., New York, 1994).

P E D
by Millie Chen, Andrew Johnson, Paul Vanouse, 2001-2009

PED is simultaneously a pseudo service bureau and an info/excer-tainment outlet from which viewer/participants may embark on free, talking-bicycle lecture tours. Each site-specific instance of PED provides many different thematic tours, each with a specific route to follow. Each bicycle is outfitted with a pedal-activated audio system. As the viewers pedal they hear the lecture, and when they stop the lecture ceases. Each 'lecture' is heard via small speakers mounted to the handlebars of each bicycle. Each tour begins and returns to the PED service bureau. Each route is marked with either temporary chalk-based paint or, alternatively, signage.

PED service-bureau attendants 'perform' 8 hour days--encouraging participants, suggesting routes, maintaining bicycles and keeping records. PED expands the parameters of performance by both invisibly performing a service bureau and orchestrating viewers to unwittingly perform (as they conspicuously ride through the city or locale on the talking-bicycles, adorned with identifying helmets). Tours typically range in length from 5 to 20 minutes, and cover a correspondingly sized area of the city/locale.

PED.Buffalo (April-July, 2001) was the first instance of the more embracing PED project and included ten tours: Safe, Natural, Comfortable, Convenient, Controlled, Efficient, Spacious, Diverse, Civilized and Pleasant. PED.Buffalo took place at the University of Buffalo Art Gallery and explored pedagogical issues of guidance and control. It posed and answered questions concerning the relationship between the suburban university and the decaying rust-belt city of Buffalo as participants traversed bike paths running throughout the 1200-acre campus, each tour with a different theme based on familiar adjectives used in marketing suburban property. The lectures varied in nature from the professorial to the sensorial, from the informational to the irrational, and periodically disseminated details related to the passing terrain--former wetlands that were paved over to build the campus.

PED.Belfast (December, 2002) included two tours: Economy and Business/First each embarking from a temporary PED service bureau, in an alleyway adjacent to the Catalyst Art Center. The content of the PED.Belfast lecture tours was a recontextualization of the city's projected image contrasted with its quotidian activities. Much of the marketing of a city depends on creating a pre-digested, unified image and reifying stereotypes (albeit for ostensibly diverse temperaments). Conversely, PED.Belfast explored diverse subjective vantages within the living city through an analysis of what should be seen/hidden, experienced/forbidden, known/forgotten, celebrated/mourned. PED.Belfast's tours were narrated by twelve Buffalonians in Irish taverns who had never been to Ireland along with twelve Belfastians in Northern Irish taverns who had never been to the states.

PED.Chongqing (June 2006, Chongqing, China) In this PED instance collective teams ride custom audio bicycle systems--6 wheeled, cart-pulling, built from salvaged bicycle parts, and powering hacked megaphones. Vehicles capable of large-scale public address. These human-driven machines broadcast audio via karaoke-inspired lectures, spreading information and entertainment in a new/ancient society.
The three tours include:
1. The Long, Long Virtuous Path to Sunshine Vehicle
2. The Twin Stacks of Supreme Happiness Vehicle
3. The Vehicle for Ten Thousand Fertile Scholars’ Star Rated Market Approved Big Shiny Hot Pot for the Benevolent Ghosts from the Immortal Mountains of the Healthy Valley of Plenty.

PED.Chongqingwas completed by an expanded PED team, including Warren Quigley and 38 students of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, China. It was realized in cooperation with the Chongqing 955 Bicycle Club and the International Long March project.

PED.RIO (March 2007, Rio De Janiero, Brazil) Continuing to talk about global issues on a local level, PED.RIO seeks to distill issues of trade between the northern and southern hemispheres through the use of metaphor. Sugar, poetry, popular music, a dubious love duet and walkie-talkies are the tools used to guide the rider/transporter along the PED.RIO trade route. For the first time, PED is utilizing live voice transmission, layered on top of the pre-recorded soundtracks, to communicate with the riders.

As a self-reflexive agency, PED acknowledges its complicity in the market of cultural exchange but sees invitations as opportunities to discuss and frame important global issues. Bicycles and walkie-talkies are considered low-tech technology at this point in history but continue to serve as common devices for urgent communication.
Joan Linder and Warren Quigley became integral members of the PED team during the PED.RIO instance.

PED.St.Johns (June 2008, St. Johns, Newfoundland) In this PED instance, stereo radio transmissions, each broadcast on a different frequency, engage riders who eavesdrop on a conversation between various characters (humans, non-humans, even phenomena) throughout the history of Newfoundland. This conversation is filled with misunderstandings, lost signals, faulty transmissions and disagreements across time.

The shadow of Guglielmo Marconi’s historic lighthouse looms large. The persistent beeps of his morse code punctuate the dialog and the booming horns of freighters in the harbor periodically obliterate all narrative.

THE ACTIVE-STIMULATION FEEDBACK PLATFORM by Paul Vanouse, 2005

Vanouse projects

VIDEO DOCU

The Active-Stimulation Feedback Platform is a highly interactive electronic artwork about networks and flows, consent and resistance, desire and aversion. It is a global simulation, extruded from the computer onto a physical interactive platform, a circle 12 feet in diameter, densely covered with arcade-style push buttons. Viewer / participants interact with the simulation by walking, crawling and rolling across these buttons. Their movement's trigger and bias playback of audio samples ("yes" or "no") recorded from 2000 people worldwide. Initiated in December 2003, the project was exhibited in progress at the International Cultural Heritage and Informatics Meeting, Haus der Culturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, Sept 2004, and premiered at the Beyond Western New York Biennial in the US, April, 2005. (Adjacent image does not show all installation components, like computer projection (below) that shows which buttons are pressed and which buttons map to which world cities.

Physically, The Active-Stimulation Feedback Platform is a 12 foot, white circular platform approximately 18 inches high. Mounted on the surface of the entire platform are 2000 red arcade-game buttons, spaced about 2 inches apart. A conical speaker hangs above the platform. Electronics, described later, reside underneath the platform. Each button is mapped to a different world city--the 2000 largest cities in the world. This mapping has been achieved by taking an existing map of the world, then treating each land-mass as a separate graphic object. The computer program then makes the land masses "attract" one another (each land mass can move/rotate one pixel per program cycle trying to maximize its proximity to other land masses). The land masses tend to form a nearly circular "pangaea" continent. Lastly, the 2000 cities are mapped to buttons on the circular platform, roughly corresponding to their location in the new global continent. Physical geography in the work is de-stabilized and nothing delineates existing borders, which can be roughly gauged by different accents but not always definitively. Certain adjacent relationships remain between countries sharing land-borders, but new ones are also formed, and these are in fact underdetermined. Since the simulation that condenses the land-masses finds different "stable" states each time the program is run in some cases Europe may be central to the land mass, and at other times India or Africa.

(Fig 2) Computer projection showing depressed buttons. Red indicates "yes" and Blue indicates "No"

(figure 3) Active-Stimulation Feedback Platform at Big Orbit Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

2000 volunteers living in (or recently emmigrated from) each of these cities is recorded saying three simple words "Yes", "No" and "Maybe", in their native language, and the individual files (3 from each person) are stored as sound files in the computer and associated with the 2000 buttons. Each button, when pushed plays either a "yes", "maybe", or a "no". The computer biases each button (whether it will say "yes", "maybe", "no") according to varied simulations. These simulations are reminiscent of cold war war-game scenarios stemming from military think-tanks, and more recent economic forecasting stemming from economic think tanks. For instance, the recent invasion of Iraq could be seen as biases of "yes" emanating from US cities, while most European buttons would be biased for "no". Similarly, global justice movements could be modeled. The simulation--extruded into real space on the ASFP--may eventually be dynamic. That is, that depending on the regions of the globe that are activated (by pressing their buttons), they could influence neighboring regions. Currently, the frequency of a buttons activation controls audio level at which the sample is played. Public opinion data was obtained from the 2001 World Values Survey. Questions include: "Would you ... attend a demonstration," "join a strike," etc. The project will eventually incorporate web-based surveying as well (allowing on-line participators to vote "yes" or "no" for their city--responses would be tallied/averaged.)

Users interact with the system by first borrowing a tyvec unitard from an attendant. Four or more participants may fit onto the platform at any one time. They experience the system by sitting, walking, crawling or preferably rolling around on the platform. Rolling is especially stimulating as feeling and hearing the spring-loaded buttons click beneath one's body weight is similar to the experience of rolling across bubble-wrap--triggering a polyphony of "yes" and/or "no" responses. Participants can see the social content of the simulation that they are entering into as the question flashes on the central projection screen. Their movements can be either intentionally attempting to influence the simulation, or merely trying to survey the global state of the system.

(figure 4) Active-Stimulation Feedback Platform_Service Area.

(figure 5) "Sandwich-style" construction method allows the platform to be light and strong, and electrical connections to be embeded bewteen layers.

Computer simulations are typically used in economic modeling, military war game scenarios, viral epidemic statistics, population studies and consumer polling. This artwork seek to reclaim such chaotic, predictive algorithms as a method to muse on varied possibilities of global feedback. While it is in the wake of failed global efforts to constrain warfare that the project was initiated, it takes inspiration from the newly operationalized networks that formed in the process. The attitude of this work is neither purely deconstructive nor cyber-utopian but does hope to inspire cooperative behavior across the simulated globe platform and perhaps even the real one. While new technology often remains trapped in western frameworks (such as English and Indo-European languages), this work is conceived with the idea of a polyphony of simple words from all major languages. Linguists note that "yes" and "no" are some of the most basic utterances that are generally recognized even without familiarity with the language. Thus as already hinted at, the project is sympathetic to neo-humanist ideas of nomadic/diasporic, polyglot, networks as inherently empathetic structures capable of inspiring social progress.

The Active-Stimulation Feedback Platform utilizes a parallel network of electronics attached to a computer. In short, groups of 16 buttons are attached to one of 125 16-bit shift registers, groups of 16 shift registers are attached to one of 8 micro-controllers, each micro-controller sends midi-data of "on buttons" to an 8 input midi box, this midi box communicates with a computer via usb. While gauging the position of bodies in a defined space may be simpler using a video camera interfaced to the computer, such a passive interface is less tactile, intentional or stimulating for the participant than the 2000 button platform. The computer programming environment used to handle midi input and play up to 32 simultaneous audio files is MAX/MSP. (figure 6) Custom interface box (shown without top cover) --showing 2 of 8 microcontrollers and connectors. The box has 64 inputs for shift registers and 8 midi outs that are sent to an 8-channel midi unit and then out via usb to the computer.

THE RELATIVE VELOCITY INSCRIPTION DEVICE by Paul Vanouse, 2002

Vanouse projects