Ana Benlloch

 

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17 February, 2006


Berners-Lee Research Facility

The Berners-Lee Research Facility Artist-In-Residence Programme
Ana Benlloch 04 - 05

The BLRF is an institution dedicated to cross-disciplinary practice investigating digital identities and interactions. There are three main departments exploring the transference of sensory experience into the digital, where staff and voluntary test subjects work together.

While in residence at the BLRF, Ana worked with volunteers in these areas to create pieces based on their experiences. She also temporarily redesigned the website, basing it on the corporate colour scheme but combining this with found objects, elements from the signage around the facility and images selected by her collaborators.

Kinaesthetic Department

Test Subject 404 believed that identity could be boiled down to an essential, Platonic ideal. We looked at the mystical symbolism hidden in the mixing of light in screens, the Ghost in the Machine:

“I was bored one day, so I scanned my hand into my computer. Not a big deal. I’m sure everyone does it, but something happened. I don’t know what I thought I’d do with it, but I got kind of obsessed with it, just kept opening the file up and looking at it. Zooming in. Watching something that was recognisably me turn into pixels. Then I’d zoom back out again, reassured to see myself return.

“Sometimes I’d just make the whole screen one pixel and stare at it for hours. I kept doing this over and over again, but was never quite satisfied. Could never find exactly the right pixel. There was something wrong with the hue, the saturation, the value…

“Then one day I realised I’d found it, the perfect pixel, just by accident, I’d paused while scrolling around to change my grip and it was right there in front of me. I can’t explain how I knew, it was just as if the colour sent a coded message to my cells that I wasn’t able to decipher, only respond as if triggered.

“I cropped it and saved it carefully, not daring to breathe in case I lost it somehow. I made back-ups on CD, hid them around the house, posted them to trusted friends. I printed it out, but it was never the same, it needed the phosphorescence of the screen to give it life.

“It was enough for a while, to know I had access to this wonder, I’d meditate on it endlessly, empty headed, while the screen bathed me in a holy light. But soon it wasn’t enough, I needed more, I felt dirty, imperfect next to it. The pixel had become my ideal, myself honed into a transcendental form. I had to become one with it. Hopefully I pushed my head up against the screen, harder and harder until my forehead bruised. To my disappointment the barrier remained. I was not going to achieve union thinking like this.

“I tried hundreds of methods to understand the problem: I played around with the talismanic image, splitting it up into its component parts, looking at the light side and the dark side. I even started looking at the code behind it, learning the string of binary that made up the file, repeating it as a mantra as I stared at the screen. Then I realised that the problem wasn’t the pixel, the problem was me. I had too many variables: I was messy, human. I needed to become digital myself, that’s why I’m here…”

(Text taken from transcript of an interview with subject)

Visual Department

Test Subject 010 became afraid that everyone else was a robot, and we investigated fictional tests for androids. By recording such empathy tests, we investigated the gains and losses once emotions become transferred into digital information.

“They look fine on the outside, but inside they’re all wrong. I can’t remember when I first realised it, seems like I’ve always known that everyone else was a construct. They’re all very convincing, very good at pretending to be real, but once you’ve caught a glimpse of it, you never forget it, start seeing it all over.

“It’s like a nothingness in the eyes, like you can see right through to the back, with no person in between.

“I hated their eyes on me, felt as if they were ripping into me, taking parts of me away, making me more like them. I hid inside, only communicating with them when I had to through the phone or internet. But soon I could feel their eyes on me even when they weren’t there, as if they were burning through the monitor somehow, travelling in binary. Eye open. Eye closed.”

(Text taken from transcript of an interview with subject)

Auditory Department

Test Subject 666 has been interested in lists of words for some time, so we investigated various sets of ‘most common words’ and came across a list from Brown University in the 1960s called the Brown Corpus. This list has been used in pattern matching in code breaking.

“Listen. Listen to me. Listen to my voice. Listen.

“Ha, sorry. Been watching a lot of films lately.

“I’ve always been told I have a good voice. Great for radio, they say. Trouble was, it never sounded right to me. You know when people tape themselves and listen back to it, it sounds wrong, recognisably you but kind of alien. I know, I know it’s something to do with it bouncing around inside your head.

“Anyway, with me it’s the opposite: I’m happy the sound of my voice when it’s recorded, but the sound in my head sets my teeth on edge. I used to avoid talking whenever I could, but of course this wasn’t very practical.
I started recording common phrases and tried to get by in telephone conversations by ‘playing’ them at appropriate points. It worked OK, so long as you didn’t mind sounding like a robot.

“Mind you, it got me thinking, I’d seen films where they got people to record lots of words and then they synthesised their voice and replaced them with robots. No, no, I didn’t want to be replaced by a robot, I just thought I might be able to make some kind of voice synthesiser, and here I am, rabbiting away on it, neat huh?”

(Text taken from transcript of an interview with subject)

http://blrf.org.uk/


25 August, 2005


Initial Account of Inserted Memory

Trial subject 92 K. L.
Dr M. M. Unlock 2004

Subject received memory by neuroinsertion, combined with visual and auditory reinforcement stimuli, over the 3rd - 26th August 2004. Absorptions rates were higher than average, with a 73% acceptance using the Barndt-Millais congruence scale. The following account was transcribed from the subjects recall of the inserted memory, at the end of the process.

Operator 5: “Can you just confirm for us that you’re comfortable talking about this?”

Subject 92: “Yes, that’s fine, go on.”

Operator 5: “Well, if you just close your eyes and let yourself relax, you might find the memories just drifting up to the surface, becoming clearer all the time. You could find that you seem to be living those memories again, seeing all the details that you want to, feeling only what you are comfortable feeling. Just let the words start to flow and tell me whatever comes into your mind.”

Subject 92: “OK… well, it was about three years ago, I was between ‘A’ levels and Uni., summer… God, it was such a great summer, it was like all the stress was over and I could just… y’know be myself for a bit… Anyway, I used to go and hang out in the fields outside of town. They were full of these yellow flowers that year, the ones they put in now and then, I think they make cooking oil out of ’em…

“So this one day, I’d gone there to hang out, my mate said she might meet me, but she didn’t turn up, so I just sat and read for a bit - something by Philip K Dick I think, cos it started to do my head in and I had to lie down and think about it… It was pretty hot and I think I must’ve dozed off for a bit, but when I woke up my head was in this weird little puddle, I remember it clearly ’cos I freaked out at first, thought it might be blood, but it was just water… very dark water… seeped back into the ground after a few minutes, but it left me a bit, kind of, prickly, like something was going to happen.

“I had to get up and go for a walk to try to clear my head. It was odd ’cos it was such a bright day, but I felt kind of cold and… hollow…”

Operator 5: “Do you want to stop?”

Subject 92: “No, no, it’s OK…”

Operator 5: “You don’t have to feel anything uncomfortable, just let the memories flow through you…”

Subject 92: “OK, well, I’d been walking for a bit, and I thought I might have heard someone calling me, so I looked back over the field and there was this… spot… this dark patch in the sky above where I’d been laying. I didn’t think much of it, but then something made me turn round to look at it again. The patch was bigger, it looked like a kind of… rip in the sky, but it was moving around, shifting. I couldn’t figure it out, you know how sometimes you see something and you just can’t interpret it, can’t fit it in your frame of reference properly… I felt pretty stupid when I realised it was just a mass of birds, crows I guess, although I’d never seen them flock like that before, is that the right word? There’s a proper word for a group of crows isn’t there? It was like when starlings are going around, getting ready to migrate or whatever, but because they were bigger birds, it wasn’t like some graceful, fluid motion, it was… lumpy… heavy… dirty…”

Operator 5: “Are you OK?”

Subject 92: “Yeah, yeah, sorry… but they didn’t seem to be making any noise. There was this big bunch of birds flying over the field, loads of them, more and more all the time it seemed, but completely silent. I mean, I was a bit away from them, but it seemed like I should be able to hear something, some kind of call… It was like they were sucking the sound in, making a whirlpool that nothing could get out of…

“Then I found myself pulled in as well, like I wanted to be a part of it, and I was stumbling towards them through these plants that came up to my chest, but I got fixed on the idea that if could join them then everything would be OK, all this weirdness and confusion would go away, so I kept trying to float up to them, y’know how you do in dreams, but this wasn’t a dream so I couldn’t, and I tried to get them to see me, to help me, but I couldn’t pick out any one bird, anyway there were always more and more of them, and every time I thought I was getting close, I’d trip over a clod of earth and it was like they’d got further away again, and I was scared that I’d scare them off and never be a part of this huge, powerful force, so I was trying to sneak up, but get as close as possible so I’d be able to see them better, but the sweat was stinging my eyes and I couldn’t see properly through the watering, and I think I might have started to cry, give up hope of ever getting there, then suddenly I was there and it was like I’d been there all along, up in the clouds with my brothers and sisters…

“Then something popped silently, I don’t know if it was in my head or outside of it, and there was a kind of explosion… no, implosion… and I saw that there was only one crow… maybe there’d only been one all along… I’m not sure.

“I watched it fly off.”

Operator 5: “Any more?”

Subject 92: “Well, this is going to sound pretty weird, but… during that whole memory my hair was blonde… ”


13 March, 2005


You are in: Surveillance

watched : can you see me?
watcher : yes, I like your eyes
watched : thank you
watcher : they’re very expressive
watched : expressive?
watcher : yeah, you can really tell what you’re thinking
watched : and what am i thinking?
watcher : well, right now you’re trying to think of something strange, that I’d never be able to guess
watched : lol
watcher : I was right, wasn’t I?
watched : yeah, you got me
watcher : I certainly have
watched : but only the surface
watcher : that’s what you think
watched : what do you mean?
watcher : well, the part I can see is a connecting point, it links us, and from that point, that door into you, I can see everything I need to, I can reach through and get the rest of you
watched : you wish
watcher : you can’t deny it, you know it’s true, you like to think you’re safe behind your screen, but you know deep down that you’re not
watched : still, you can’t do anything, you can’t touch me, everything i’ve said to you could be a lie
watcher : sure, but that kind of thing doesn’t matter here, we’re not in ‘real’ space any more, we’re in a space that only exists because we believe it does, so all I have to do is make you believe something and it becomes real
watched : hmmm, maybe, but what makes you think you can do that?
watcher : I already have, every word I say to you is constructing a reality, making you believe certain things about me
watched : no more than when i say something to you
watcher : exactly! see, you’re starting to believe in my reality already


15 August, 2004


Cut & Paste & Cut Up & Quote

We must learn to subvert existing cities. It’s the way to finally take charge. All you need is a computer, a viewpoint and the ability to express it. The separation and hostility between the “world” of art and the “world” of everyday life finally exploded in deep and voiceless grief. I did not know even the circumstances that had precipitated the conflict. Nothing has ever happened here, and nothing ever will. Conflict of interest, competition and exploitation are, in this context, notions devoid of content, punctuated by sharp screeching sounds; automatic equipment was intoning the phrases of the researchers who study cyberspace addictions. Are they addicted too? They expect everything and have nothing to fear, and at that point we’ll see some amazing social changes.

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Fantasies about the body and technology and human/machine or organic/inorganic combinations. There’s just typed words. You see this attempt to go through language to something beyond. Is it as real or more real than reality, is it mistaken for reality, or is it a new reality that shows up the constructed, performed, artificial nature of our old off-line reality?

He was particularly interested in the questions of thought transference and of apparitions of the living, and in November, 1896, he commenced a series of experiments in conjunction with Mr. Vincey, of Staple Inn, in order to test the alleged possibility of projecting an apparition of one’s self by force of will through space.

When I read the advertisements in the paper I see they are all lies. Funny little Martians that laughed at us humans for eating real potatoes! Featuring Menacing Motor Action! The making of the big machine progressed all the more rapidly for this. Once you push the “Upload Photo” button, depending on your connection speed, it may take a few minutes to upload. When freedom is practiced in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere image of itself.

Check out this girl. I think she’s in love with you. Do you know a weed when you see it? Of course, one person’s weed is another’s flower, so the answer is partly personal and philosophical. When I start painting I shall stop writing!

I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, featuring three authentic Cyberman commands. Being asked to become a wizard often is a powerful experience for a user. In the ancient Egyptian mysteries it was attributed to the god of catastrophe and drowning.

This fantastic cult classic authentic Dalek commands keeps getting better year after year. You want to put on your custom button and flashing lights with brand new pictures. The subservient battle hardened silver androids resembling humanoids in armour and date fact-file. This is the collectors group of vinyl and rubber, sensor rich mannequins that have selfishly saved thousands of lives by being ‘accident-prone’.

Ethnographers typically begin their research with a set of research questions from which to guide their observations. Do you feel like there’s something missing from your life if you don’t blog for a day? If a behavior is rewarded, it is more likely to be repeated. If it is punished, it becomes suppressed.

Despite the incredible distances and differences that exist between these areas, the movie spectaculars, the junk food, the consumer electronics, and the pre-recorded bits of entertainment, we will be in control of a prized asset, and we will seek to develop its potential, raising it to new heights. The birds would return and sing once again.

The worldwide technological revolution of our own era–the digital, networked, information age– provides a context for a retrospective analysis of the cultural meaning of technology. How is the introduction of technology represented as a “fall” from an idealized origin? Convergence and complexity are the key words of the Information Age.

writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

The term “android” was invented by science fiction writers to denote an artificial human made mostly of organic parts, in distinction to a robot, made of purely mechanical parts (though Carl Capek, from whose work the term “robot” comes, actually depicted androids). It comes from the Greek word “andros” meaning “man” and the ending “oid,” meaning “similar to.” George Lucas’ untraditional use of the term ” android” to designate purely mechanical robots who could be like R2D2, not at all man-shaped, has hopelessly confused the terminology ever since.

It’s some sort of temporal divergence. As you look around, you realise the only noise you can hear is the faint sound of wind whistling through the nearby buildings. It’s a ghost town. The radiation levels are perfectly safe now. “Well, what am I going to do now?” you ask the time machine. The lights on the console blink confusingly.

AWHFY - Are we having fun yet?

It should by now be common knowledge that the camera is primarily a tool of social control. The camera as used in advertizing presents to the populace the goods and lifestyles that are deemed desirable. The camera as used in film and TV then educates the populace on how to live one’s life in a proper manner, so that one can acquire these goods and lifestyles (whether by legal or illegal means).

In order to keep us happy and spending more as consumers then capitalism is going to have to tap rather more darker strains in our characters. Perverse inversions and unsettling paradoxes, they appear to be meaningless. The psychopathology of everyday life, cold and distant or abstract. The consumer society hungers for the deviant and unexpected. A perverse sexual act can liberate the visionary self in even the dullest soul, affectless casualties of the nihilistic, over-mediated consumer landscape. A paralysing conformity and boredom that can only be relieved by some sort of violent act. Our latent psychopathy is the last nature reserve, a place of refuge for the endangered mind. Morality reduced to aesthetics, a controlled and supervised madness. All we have left as an ideology is consumerism, searching for meaning in a meaningless universe, by taking your mail-order Kalashnikov into the nearest supermarket and letting rip. The total acceptance of the substrate of violence in consumer societies when it manifests itself. What else can drive the bizarre shifts in the entertainment landscape that will keep us ‘buying’?

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I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless; the poison is in the sugar. The Spectacle is not just a collection of images. It is the medium of communication between images and is the means by which the real world is interpreted. Public Relations. The mass media is spectacular. Even in extremis it is unable to see itself as a participant in real life. Instead it turns real life into a spectacle - and participates in that. The spectacle offers ‘new lamps for old’. Powerless and alienated in our real community it encourages us to live the community life of Ambridge, Crossroads or Coronation Street. All is conterfeit. So confident - it can taunt us with our own gullibility. Does your life match up to the spectacle?Isn’t real life best left to the experts? …Enjoy. The producer sells; The Consumer buys; and the COMMODITY gets sold. The TV companies produce the programmes, the advertisers culture. That really big commodity. The one that sells all the others. The mass media turns real life into a comic strip. “The black panther”, “The Jackal”, “The Penguin”. The blood is real but the language is the language of Gotham City. In the right words. In the right order. Without the mass media there can be little effective propoganda. …. with it there is very little else. ‘You might just as well say’, added the March Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”‘. Sometimes the mass media will even bite the hand that feeds it….. but it will never bite it off. It’s only Rock n’ Roll! Technological Valium. Programming? Isn’t that what they do to computers?

Our ambitions are clearly megalomaniac. The depletion of modern forms of art and style is all too obvious. The development of this task presupposes a revolution that has yet to take place. This desire gets smothered. It is their timidity that keeps people from looking beyond the decomposition, the pursuit of fragmentary works combined with simple-minded proclamations of an alleged new stage, a mechanistic idea whose function is to reassure. Very much “of today” in relation to their audiences, and nothing more, sidetracked in outdated theories, no longer offers even the memory of a reality.

In keeping with Channel 40s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts in living color, you’re going to see another first – an attempt at suicide.

I could not recognize a single constellation. A distant voice reached me through the murmuring and crackling, shifted unexpectedly, penetrating my pneumatic cocoon. I had missed the precious moment. Successive bursts of static came through the headphones, and ran through my entire body, organic, sentient, unimaginably powerful, profoundly indifferent. The stars having vanished long since the vibration reached me, I felt no fear, I was falling against a background of deep, low-pitched murmuring. My gaze was swallowed up on the pale reddish glow of infinity, swaying with a peculiar slow-motion rhythm imposed on it by the artificial magnetic field, filtered through the insulating layers of the outer skins the lurid sky became grey, distant and flat; everything was blotted out; I was falling in a spin. I turned round. There was total silence.


From Constant Gibson Blog Performative Writing project.

All text taken from other sources and re-presented.


21 July, 2004