David Rokeby is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in interactive art and an innovator in interactive and sonification technologies. He has achieved international recognition as an artist and has accomplished many discoveries with artificial intelligent in responsive to the human mind, often referring to the interface as an “experience of being”.[i] In Marshall McLuhan’s essay “The Medium Is the Message”, McLuhan explains that the personal and social consequences of any medium, of any extension of ourselves, result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. David’s constant struggle with being an interactive artist is trying to get society to comprehend the message behind his interactive work. “The trouble begins as the user’s awareness of the interface ends.”[ii] He wants the user to interact without even thinking of the interface at all. David, being such an optimistic artist, relies on many of his exhibitions to become a form of research. The process of his work become the “laboratories” and his final product of his installations are formed into a continuation of research that he calls “freedom research” where his ideas about interaction and experience are tested and either accepted or denied by the general public as a master piece in the digital world of technologies.
In constant challenges of achievement David tends to stay focused on the elements of illusion and fantasy in his installations as well, staying clear of the norm of culture based video games, where the main focus is controlled by the interface of the system. Often David refers “interactive technology as a medium through which we communicate with ourselves…a mirror. The medium not only reflects back, but also refracts what it is given; what is returned is ourselves, transformed and processed. To the degree that the technology reflects ourselves back recognizably, it provides us with a self-image, a sense of self. To the degree that the technology transforms our image in the act of reflection, it provides us with a sense of the relation between this self and the experienced world. This is analogous to our relationship with the universe. Newton’s First Law, stating that “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” implies that everything is a mirror. We discover our ‘selves’ in the mirror of the universe.”[iii] “In Rokeby’s essay, “Transforming Mirrors” he cites the myth of Narcissus and Echo, in which Echo’s words cannot be chosen by herself she may only copy the words that were spoken to her (similar to a computer). To communicate with the one she feel in love with, (Narcissus) she had to alter the sounding of her voice to repeat the words that were spoken to her so that her repeated words had a different expression. She had to alter her words by viewing through the medium that was given. Rokeby refers Echo “as the interactive artist” who in my own words, transforms what is given by the participant into something other than what is intended. The interactive artists still have the capability to lay down the paths, but the user influences the path they take without complete control of the system.
He uses technology to critically examine artificial intelligence, to reflect on human issues and interactivity in order to explore intuitive, bodily, spatial and intimate relationships between the computer and the human. An interesting expression that David Rokeby gives in his installations is the ongoing examination of the computer’s interface. Rokeby did some research of his own by turning himself into a human simulation of his own virtual reality of himself. He came to the conclusion that the ambiguity and contradiction feelings were his indefinite enemies. This lead Rokeby to explore computer technology from a different angle in hopes to take control of interpretation out of the system, like so many video games have, and place it into the human hands, allowing the participator to take control of their own actions and interpretations.
One of David’s goals in dealing with his installations is to establish an uncontrolled environment, between the virtual world and the real world, where even though the computer is usually used as the medium, has no control over the experience. In his installations “Very Nervous System”, “N-Cha(N)t”, and “The Giver Of Names” the computer clearly represents the medium, but becomes indefinable through the process of the real-time display allowing the experience to become an intimate relationship between the participant and the computer itself. The computer becomes, more in sense, as the student while the interactor becomes an influential teacher.
“Very Nervous System” is a very complex notion of interactivity in a sense it is taking it to its limits in David’s words, that interfaces meet imprints on our perpetual systems which we carry out into the world. “Very Nervous System”, began in 1983 as an experiment in visceral communication with computers. He wanted to be able to communicate to the computer in a direct way without using verbal communication or any type of logical manner. Over the course of 13 years, David continued to work on his piece and constantly added to it or created new ones.
“Very Nervous System” is an open system in the sense that Rokeby has avoided taking part in and let’s the viewers become the participator. “While the ‘sound’ of the system and the ‘dance’ of the person within the space are of interest to me, the central aspect of the work is neither the ‘sound’ nor the ‘dance’. It is the relationship that develops between the sounding installation and the dancing person that is the core of the work.”[iv] In the making of “Very Nervous System” installation, Rokeby programmed the computer to observe physical gestures through a video camera and then the computer records the body movement and translates the movements into sound. The tools that are used such as, video cameras, image processors, computers, synthesizers, and a sound system help to create a space where the system translates the gestures into sound or music by the movement of one’s body where movement of the body from the participator becomes an orchestral event. The contributor becomes one with the computer and together they are able to come in sync with one another and control the sound, speed, and pitch In this real-time system. If the flow between the two exceeds one another by the cause of the participator than the final results can become unsatisfying. The installation explores the fast, complex interface between the mind and body, and being able to control the movement helps to control the sounds that are played. The “Very Nervous System” has even stepped out of the art world and has reached the point where technology meets science. His installation was introduced to help patients with Parkinson’s disease. People who suffer from Parkinson’s disease tend to lose their ability to wield their own movement but remain capable of responding quickly in emergencies. The “Very Nervous System” helped to reengage Parkinson’s sufferers with ability to motivate their own movement and their normal day-to-day lives.
Rokeby’s N-Cha(n)t installation is most recognized for the concept of language between human/computer intelligence. Rokeby’s inspiration for this piece came from the sounds of whispers he constantly heard in church growing up. His idea was to get a community of computers to communicate with one another and create their own conversations, or CHANTS. With language being the barrier that still separates the computers from the humans, David still tends to challenge the on going ambiguousness of the system and creating an uncontrolled environment. The computer agents tend to remind you of an environment you find at parties, where you are not fully catching what the person you’re directly listening to be saying. You tend to hear all the conversations around you at the same time. With 7 computers programmed with speech recognition software networked with one another the computers are at the mercy of the participators in attempt to reach a consensus concerning the naming of a given object or knowledge of the human language. When someone walks up to the computer’s microphone and speaks to the computer the computer attempts to understand what is said and creates a form of associations from its own database. Without the help of the participant the system would not be able to gain the knowledge the computers need to understand each other. In this installation the viewers become the educated communicators.
When the installation area become bare of humans the computers began to, in a sense, become lonely and start to converse with one another by using the association language that the computers have with stilled into their database. The computers were able to create their own alien language. This installation clearly identifies the contrast between human and computer based communication, the networked computer agents are not able to converse into human-like communicators, they can only be taught what they are programmed to be taught and saved into their database. Can it be true what Norbert Wiener says in ”Men, Machines, and the World About”, that, “The machine appears now, not as a source of power, but a source of control and a source of communication”.[v] David Rokeby has in fact, defined this statement to be false. In Rokeby’s description of this installation he describes the artificial components “as a group of virtual agents hanging out in some type of virtual space in idle mode conversing with one another as like humans do when their work is paused”. Rokeby then goes on to state that his intentions were merely to create a group of intelligent agents, capable of the most rudimentary form of verbal communication, “granted a fraction of some freedom they are utterly incapable of desiring”.”[vi]
How far can the use of language go when dealing with virtual systems? “The Giver of Names” is quite simply, a computer system that gives objects names and is not based on artificial intelligence or considered a learning system but is clearly associated with the automata of the system and a complex reflection of the participator. David believes that it is hard for humans to understand the virtual systems and how they function in a learning environment. His intentions of this project was to persuade a little understand of the interface. “The Giver of Names” is intended to trace a more complex feedback loop through the perception, consciousness and memory of the viewer. To be successful, its responses must be unpredictable, but must never appear to be random; creating a tension that draws the audience to reflect back through their own perceptual, verbal and imaginative processes.[vii]
In “The Giver of Names” installation David wanted to create an interface that had a wider range of complex knowledge, which recognized and verbally described a material object that the interactor would place on a pedestal. The installation includes an empty pedestal, a video camera, a computer system and a small video projection. The camera observes the top of the pedestal. The installation has very imitated uses for interaction between humans and computers, but the sole control lies in the human hand’s in placing the object on the pedestal so the computer can interact and communicate what it sees. The installation space is full of objects of many sorts. The gallery visitor can choose an object or set of objects from those in the space, or anything they might have with them, and place them on the pedestal. When an object is placed on the pedestal, the computer grabs an image. It then performs many levels of image processing. These processes are visible on a video projection above the pedestal. In the projection, the objects make the transition from real to imaged to increasingly abstract as the system tries to make sense of them.
David is a firm believer that artists help to pave the understanding of technology in today’s society. “We’re laying the foundations for new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. And through communications interfaces we’re building new social and political infrastructures.”[viii] “The artists’ role is to explore, but at the same time, question, challenge and transform the technologies that they utilize”.[ix] An artificial experience holds restraints on the human mind and cleverly changes the perception of what it sees and interprets it to where the person loses the “real” experience. Rokeby’s ongoing exploration and research on intelligent systems still carry on to this day. He continues to focus on the way that computer interfaces behave and how they can be controlled in an open interactive installation allowing the viewers not to be swept up into the virtual world.
[i] David Rokeby, "The Construction of Experience: Interface as Content." “In Digital Illusion: Entertaining the Future with High Technology,” Clark Dodsworth, Jr., Contributing Editor 1998 by the ACM Press, a division of the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM) published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
[ii] David Rokeby, “Transforming Mirrors”, Subjectivity and Control In Interactive Media, http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/mirrors.html
[iii] David Rokeby, “Transforming Mirrors”, Subjectivity and Control In Interactive Media, http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/mirrors.html
[iv] David Rokeby, “The Harmonics of Interaction, published in MUSICWORKS 46, “Sound and Movement”, Spring 1990.
[v] Norbert Weiner, “Men, Machines, and the World About (1954),” Reading #4 in Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
[vi] David Rokeby, Installation, “N-Cha(n)t” http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/nchant.html
[vii] David Rokeby: Lecture for "Info Art", Kwangju Biennale, David Rokeby, Texts, http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/nchant.html
[viii] David Rokeby, "The Construction of Experience: Interface as Content. “In Digital Illusion: Entertaining the Future with High Technology,” Clark Dodsworth, Jr., Contributing Editor 1998 by the ACM Press, a division of the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM) published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
[ix] David Rokeby, “Transforming Mirrors”, Subjectivity and Control In Interactive Media, http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/mirrors.html
