Reseau/Resonance - Connective processes and artistic practice
Andreas Broeckmann
pdf (150 Kb)
[This text was first presented as a talk at the artmedia 8 conference,
Paris, on 29 November 2002. Artmedia was co-organized by University
of Salerno, CFCE
(Centre Français du Commerce Extérieur), the ENS (Ecole Normale
Supérieure) and Leonardo/Olats that hosts the web site and publishes the
proceedings online http://www.olats.org/artmedia8.html.
Thanks to Annick Bureaud.
Comments welcome]
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"feels like I'm falling into this stream
of sound / going back and coming forward / backwards and
forwards, caught on the wave of a wave"
(Jeff Noon, Needle in the Groove) |
1. Into the Wire
Most internet art projects
use the net solely
as a telematic and
tele-communicative
transmission medium
that connects computers
and servers through
which artists,
performers and users exchange data, communicate and collaboratively create
files and events. At
the same time, some
artists are exploring
the electronic networks
as specific socio-technical structures with specific forms of social and machinic
agency related to them, in which people and machines interact in ways unique
to this environment. Recent projects by Knowbotic Research, Marko Peljhan and
Carsten Nicolai, Ulrike Gabriel, and Atau Tanaka, use the net as a performative
space of social and aesthetic resonance in which notions of subjectivity, action
and production are being articulated and re-assessed. This text discusses the
notion of "resonance" in order to think through these approaches to network-based
art practices.
Resonance is, first and foremost, a phenomenon of sound. The acoustical instruments
that we know, from the flute and the trumpet to the guitar and the piano, use
the resonance activated by hitting the strings or blowing into them to bring
about the instruments' sounds. The sound of the guitar are the waves effected
in the body of the guitar by the vibrating strings that have been struck or
plucked by the player. These vibrations transform into the rich an full-bodied
sound
of the acoustic guitar.
An art project that articulates the notion of resonance in relation to the
Internet is the Global String, a recent project by Paris-based artist Atau
Tanaka and
his colleague Kaspar Toeplitz. Tanaka has explored the performative and acoustical
qualities of network structures in many performances of the Sensorband, in
which he is joined by the two sound artists Edwin van der Heide and Zbigniew
Karkowski.
Global String is a network installation which consists of two steel strings,
up to 12 metres in length, placed in two separate locations which are connected
through an Internet connection. Each of the strings ends in an interface that
is able to pick up the vibration of the string and transform it into a signal
that can be sent across the Internet. Additionally, there is a magnetic actuator
which can activate the string according to the signal received from the other
string. The two parts of the Global String can thus be thought of as the two
ends of a single string, connected to each other through the virtual space
of the network. The signal travelling from one end to the other is not transmitted
in its pure form, but is modulated by the number of hops it has to take through
the Net's server space, the amount of traffic it encounters on the server nodes,
and the delay time that it experiences on its journey. The parameters chosen
for the modulation of the sound are defined by these technical conditions.
Like
in a physical, acoustical instrument, the physical technological infrastructure
of the Internet modulates the sound that can be heard at one end of the string
when it is hit or plucked at the other end. Global String uses the Net and
its infrastructure as a tuned resonant body and is thus both an interactive,
telematic
installation and an electro-acoustical instrument.
One of the aims of this essay is to ascertain in how far the notion of resonance
can, beyond such a literal application of the concept of resonance in the network,
function as a useful metaphor and concept for describing specific aspects of
an aesthetics of network-based art.
2. Making Things Hum
The US-American artist
Mark Bain has dealt
with the phenomenon
of resonance in a most
radical way. In his
series of resonant
architectures', Bain
seeks
out
the resonant frequencies of built structures like houses and bridges. Each
structure has its own frequency at which it starts to resonate, making it possible
to veritably
play' a building by mechanically exciting it. Thus, the building itself can
be made to act as a resonant body, as the body of an over-sized acoustical
instrument.
Bain has studied the properties of resonance in depth. He writes:
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"The basic idea is that when a system
is stimulated with a self-reinforcing method of activation,
then a kind of self-propelled resonance can occur. As I've
described with some of my work on buildings, this resonance
becomes a kind of ringing of the architecture; a complex
grouping of structural elements coupled to an acoustic activator
which feeds the system. A similar concept is the 'standing
wave', where all the elements along with the provocative
force combine into
a stable situation." |
Bain continues
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"Resonance seems to straddle a knife-edge
between stability and instability depending on the motivating
factors. One element that can't be left out though is that
of the self-referential or feedback. This is where the system
is self-sensing or feeling its own output in order to align
the proper input and therefore reinforcing the output again.
This sensing line back to itself is required for any kind
of suitable resonance to occur. As you can see in this arrangement,
potentials for things to lose control are great. (...) Essentially
though this destabilized form is always looking for stability
(imagine atomic and molecular structures), but of course
it may have to destroy everything in its path first. Resonance
also has a kind of efficiency, which makes it seem that the
sum of the parts is much greater than what is put in originally." (M.
Bain, private communication, October 2002) |
Much earlier, John Cage has pointed out the fact that the human
body can also function as a resonant object which produces its
own continuous soundscape
that envelops us. Cage describes how he was trying to find a fully silent space
and
entered an anechoic room at Harvard University where, as he recalls, "I
heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer
in charge, he informed me that one was my nervous system in operation, the
low one was my blood circulation. Until I die, there will be sounds." (1961,
cit. P. Sherburne, Parachute 107, p.68).
These examples illustrate that resonance is an intensely analogue phenomenon
which is immediately tied to the physical properties of an object, body or
structure, properties which range from the molecular micro-structure to the
overall macro-structure
and the configuration of the materials in space. When taken from an electronic
source, resonance is the material transformation of the wave form in electronic
currents into a physical experience or event. Resonance is the agitated response
of matter to the immaterial call of the electronic wave.
The transmutation of electrical currents into material wave forms already surprised
the researchers of electricity in the 18th century, who were exploring the
wonderous continuity between the visible and the invisible world of the yet
hardly understood
phenomena of the electrical current. The Hungarian-German researcher Ernst
Florens Friedrich Chladni published, in 1787, a book called the Theory of Sound.
In this book he presented research that he had done on the effect that physical
excitation would have on a glass plate covered by graphite. Chladni would use
the bow of a violin to stroke along the side of these glass plates, discovering
that depending on the material of the plate and the speed of the stroke, the
graphite would form very distinct star-shaped patterns which were a remediation
of the sonic vibration as an image. Chladni's sound figures' are a visible
manifestation of standing wave resonance on the material surface of the glass
plates. They
illustrate the physical continuum between the waves constituting the experiences
of light, sound and matter whose existence as specific, separate events of
perception depend on the perceptive system which categorises them as optical,
acoustical
or material.
Another master of these explorations, Nikola Tesla, not only did an experiment
which precisely prefigures Mark Bain's experiments in resonant architecture,
when Tesla fed back the resonant frequency of a skyscraper in New York to the
building until it started vibrating and almost collapsed. Tesla also did extensive
research about infrasonic waves and thus laid the basis for the research about
acoustic weapons which in turn target the human body as the aim of their penetrating
sound waves.
Resonance thus becomes the medium for sculpting with the hidden acoustic and
material potentials of all things material.
3. With the Flow
The question is in
how far we can speak
of electronic network
space as a resonant
space. Although constituted by material technical objects, the network system
is characterised by the discontinuity of its parts and the discreetness of
the digital signals that flow through it. In a practical sense, it will hardly
be
possible to make a network connection hum in the same way as a telegraphic
wire may hum in the wind, or the way Mark Bain's Live Room resonated through
the walls
as well as the bodies of its visitors.
Networks, however, resonate in a different sense of the word which is worth
exploring. Philip Sherburne, for instance describes the increasing liquidity
of the digital
soundscape:
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"The digital object seeps between the
cracks of matter, spills out of the grooves of the vinyl
or aluminium disc and becomes liquid. In this model, a model
so nascent we can hardly recognize its true impact, music
ceases to be a question of objects and becomes an issue of
pure circulation - hence the burgeoning culture of peer-to-peer
trading, and also remixes, bootlegs, versions and repackaging
underground hits as car commercials and writing concertos
for the turntable." (ibid., p.68-69) |
This understanding of excitation, of liquidity and resonance
departs from a narrow physical understanding of resonance and
its foundation in the transformation
of waves. In a technological infrastructure like the digital networks, the
material
of transformation and propagation, the carrier of waves can also be strings
of digital code and information segments. Atau Tanaka's project Global String
refers
to such trans-mediations between the analogue vibration of the string and the
digital representations of this vibration through the actuators and their tuned
transmission.
A highly modular, heterogenous disposition was presented by the telecommunications
artist Marko Peljhan and sound artist Carsten Nicolai in their installation
project POLAR which was first presented by the now defunct Canon ArtLab in
Tokyo. POLAR
constitutes a complex interface to the network which it approaches as a quasi-animated
organism of knowledge. Data streams, zones of intensity and information structures
are represented by different visual and acoustic modules which can be modified
interactively by the visitor. The installation is not concerned with the knowledge
stored and represented in the network, but with the technical infrastructure
of the network which is the object of this aesthetical investigation. As a
reminiscence to the intelligent ocean in Andrej Tarkovski's film Solaris, POLAR
speculates
about a complex and unbounded, autonomous technoid intelligence into which
the visitor is allowed partial insights. Requests sent through the network
are fed
back as transformed, amplified, fragmented experiences that immerse the visitor
in a resonant environment that treats text, sound and technology as a continuous
matrix connecting semiotic with self-expressive strata.
In his more recent explorations, Mark Bain is on a similar trail. He writes:
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"Lately, I have been working with data
networks and the audification or sonification of data streams.
Using 'sniffer' agents to capture and listen to pure data
signals allows you to hear on a certain base level, the activity
of a signal without using the usual modes of perception.
There are sniffing agents that are also designed to analyze
the Internet, showing you peaks and nodes of activity and
connection, providing a better understanding of what and
where things are happening." (ibid.) |
The network environment in which these signals travel is made
up of machines as much as of the people who use them for all
different types of communication
and data transfer. Bain continues:
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"[Sometimes] the Internet feels sluggish and the bits don't get through,
user peak and slow death. But then alternate connections develop, rerouting to
other locations and thus disturbing normal traffic that was already there, expanding,
propelling, growing, and speeding to the shortest point possible. You see it
in the way the time of day plays a factor in who's online and where, like an
electronic horizon moving across the earth in clockwork motion. And when networks
crash, a system provocateur. Feedback and ripple effects also occur due to the
very nature of the nets medial form. Self-generating Spam, virus hoaxes, news
events, hackavism, all lead to these peaks in flows. - Ultimately, net resonance
resides in the users. The net is just the connective tissue allowing the flow
to occur. And where you have flow, dynamics and action, resonance effects will
be endemic to that system." (ibid.) |
You can see us entering a different terrain when we think of
the net as a resonant space in which the vibrato of the spammer,
the wave of a small yet powerful
computer virus spread and resonante with particular ease across the world of
Windows and
Microsoft Outlook. The spam-driven grunge of Lagos, the smooth glitch of Redmont,
spinning on our hard-drives, tickling the wires, jumping from node to node.
The material basis of network-based resonance is uninterrupted connectivity,
a machinic continuum that has its own properties burnt into processors and
software configurations. As in the models of architectural resonance quoted
earlier, this
digital resonance is based on the generative qualities of software which is
able to multiply its effects in a favourable network environment where through
feedback
it can acquire an uncontrollable, at times destructive dynamics which will
lead to a temporary stabilisation on another plane. And it is this instability
which
is creatively used by the artists practicing net activism: The politics of
the Net are inseparable from the technological and juridical regimes that rule
it.
The trick, as in Bain's resonant architecture, is to find the resonant frequencies
that make networked computers hum...
This kind of feedback has featured prominently in the artistic work of Japanese
artist Seiko Mikami who implicates the perceptual system of the installation
visitor into strongly involving techno-physiological feedback loops. Similarly,
German artist Nikolas Anatol Baginsky has built intricate dispositions in which
neural networks serve robotic installations to react with ever more simulated
intelligence and precision to a visiotor's presence.
We encounter an even more direct confrontation with the physical efficacity
of networked data realities in Ulrike Gabriel's project Sphere. This project
is
based on the construction of a data body which is an abstract and externalised
representation of the Internet user. This sphere' can be used as a kind of
tele-bomb to shoot down the network terminal of another user. The trajectory
of this projectile
moves across IP-space of the Internet which is mapped back to the geographical
coordinates of the globe. On a precisely calculated orbit, the projectile of
the data-sphere effects electro-magnetic turbulences on the computers it passes
on its route, before the sphere forcefully hits its target and temporarily
disturbs the electrical field on computer screens, in projections and light
sources. As
in other works of Ulrike Gabriel, we experience an intense and violent articulation
of technology and perception, of cybernetic systems and physiological experience.
The network is the site at which digital presence is constituted, medialised
and consumed. The medialisation of this confrontation is the electro-magnetic
resonance of the data-body on its trajectory through the physical space of
the network. The subject of this medialisation emerges from the sharp, edgy
interface
between body, information and trajectory, a phylum which resonates at the frequency
of fear.
4. In the Guts
When a heavy sound
hits us, it reminds
us of the physical
nature of the sound
wave, and of the material presence of our bodies in space. Think of the moment
when you are sitting somewhere inside and a truck waiting outside turns the
whole building, including yourself, into a resonating instrument. The sound
is, at
the same time, disembodied and non-directional, as well as penetrating deep
into our guts.
In electronic music and sound art, the relationship between technology, space
and the human body as it is sculpted by resonant sounds has been explored in
depth. The visually and sonically excessive performances by Granular Synthesis
overwhelm the viewers and deliberately blur the boundaries between image, sound
and body in aggressively immersive spatial configurations. Quite differently,
La Monte Young's long-term installation Dream House (1993-2003) which can still
be seen at the Melafoundation in New York until next year, finely sculpts a
sonic environment which envelops the visitor and gives him a strong sense of
space,
place, and the effect that his own movements in the space are having on the
sonic conditions of the space.
A set recently played at the dis-patch Festival in Belgrade (Cinema REX,
23 Oct. 2003) by Swedish musician Andreas Berthling and a trio called Tape
travelled precisely on the boundary between pure resonance and the coded sound
of music.
With his computer, Berthling created very lush, standing sound waves which
turned the performance space into a single continuous sound object, whereas
his co-musicians
played different acoustical instruments that were able to break the continuous
envelope and define time, place and musical meaning through their rhythmic
and partly melodic play. The performance oscillated between the disembodied
and subjectless
experience of the resonant sounds, and the structured musical interventions.
It was possible to experience that music is the representational mode of sound,
transcending the purely physiological impact of the sound waves on to a semiotic
level. Resonance is a function of the disposition coupling space, sound, technology
and bodies into a heterogenous machine. In contrast, music works with the separation
and the decoupling of space, sound and body through rhythm and melodic structures
which subjectify the listener by placing him in a context of semiotic systems
and modes of socially meaningful sonic representations.
Is the contrast between resonance and music homologuous to that between "becoming
machine" and "becoming subject"? The electronically induced
resonant wave forces a transgression which can be described as cyborgian, as
was attempted
by British music theorist Kodwo Eshun when a few years ago he talked about
the vocoder as a technico-musical instrument for narrowing the gap between
human
and technological music machines.
In one of the most impressive pieces of network-based art so far, the group
Knowbotic Research created the installation Anonymous Muttering which was first
presented
in Rotterdam in 1996. In their self-developed connective interfaces, Knowbotic
Research have, for many years, explored the possibilities and the conditions
of networked action and cooperation. Anonymous Muttering is their most radical
gesture as yet in the direction of a dramatisation of the interface in which
dislocated subjects resonate in a translocal, techno-social environment. For
this installation, the music from DJ-events is transmitted, digitised and cut
up by a computer into small, granular sound units which are in turn recomposed
in a felt-like sound surface according to parameters of probability. These
sounds are projected in the installation which is delimited by two circles
of stroboscopic
lights and a loop of loudspeakers. A silicon membrane, through which the data
flow, is placed in the installation. It can be bent, turned and folded by the
visitors who thus fold and modulate the felt of sound. A similar, net-shaped
JAVA interface on the website of the project can be pushed and pulled in a
similar fashion by visitors of the website who can thus interact in realtime
with the
same sound events that are also projected into the on-site installation and
follow it through a live-stream on the net. The productive tension between
local and
trans-local possibilities of intervention, between human and technical agents
can be experienced as an irritating and overwhelming oscillation between order
and sheer perceptive, de-subjectified sublimation. Anonymous Muttering sends
bodies spinning, with eyes and ears, humming and hovering in a space that is
all light and sound, without boundaries. Resonating in perception.
5. On a Different
Note
I would like to end
on a note that is
different from this
rather romantic fantasy
of immersion and transgression. In their most recent work, Minds of Concern,
the group Knowbotic Research invite gallery visitors to choose from a list
of selected NGOs whose Internet servers are subsequently port-scanned in
order to
discover potential security risks on those servers. The results of these
port-scans are published
in a news-ticker
on the website, though
in encrypted form.
The
project Minds of Concern seeks to raise awareness around the contested public
space of the electronic networks in which the most progressive agents often
run the greatest risk, and it wants to point to the dilemma that the enlightened,
liberal NGO world needs to protect itself and police the technological boundaries
of the very zones of liberty that it opens up.
In our present context, Minds of Concern is relevant because it rejects a
notion of resonance, in which the wires would start to hum, and instead uses
the principle
of syncopation, the hard rhythm of the exploitation tools scanning and attacking
the outer shells of the Internet server. While network resonance is a fascinating
and potentially beautiful phenomenon to study, the urgency of the political
situation, in which the war that was declared in the days after September
11th continuous
to rage and penetrate deeper and deeper into our lives, in this situation
we may not want to seek the immersion of resonance but the syncopated subjectivation
of port-scan reality.
Online references
Nicolas Anatol Baginsky
- http://www.provi.de/~nab
Ulrike Gabriel: Sphere
- http://www.codelab-berlin.de
Paul Garrin: Name.Space
- http://name-space.com
Knowbotic Research
- http://www.krcf.org
Seiko Mikami - http://bionet_org.tripod.com
Marko Pejhan/Carsten
Nicolai: POLAR - http://www.canon.co.jp/cast/artlab/artlab10/
RTMark - http://www.rtmark.com
Atau Tanaka: Global
String - http://www.sensorband.com/atau/
Herwig Weiser: zgodlocator
- http://www.zgodlocator.org
La Monte Young: Dream
House (1993,
NYC, The Mela Foundation)
- http://melafoundation.org/dream02.htm
Berlin/Paris, 29
November 2002
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