More past work!

Three works created during International Artist Residency at The Red Stables, Dublin, Ireland, Jan-April 2007. Four-day installation/performance. The Red Stables is located in St Anne’s Park, Dublin 3, and opened in June 2006. The building had recently been restored to its former Victorian glory with period features identifying the horse stables of the former Guinness Family Estate. It is located in of Dublin’s largest parks, St Anne’s covering approximately 270 acres.

Embedded below is the full edited document, at 21’35″. The first part starts at the beginning, the second part (a “videogame”) starts at 3’35″, and the third part (an interactive performance) starts at 7’25″.

This project was meant to emulate the setting and process found in social science experiments. The viewer/participant were meant to form their own conclusions after the process was completed.

A receptionist leads viewers one-by-one through a series of video installations and performances that develop from one to the next. Each piece deals with the construct of ‘evil’ in playful terms, pulling from the discourse on ‘evil’ as learned behavior or genetic predisposition. Simulated violence is combined with saccharine cuteness. In the first video, Furface Surface, a dog plays on the beach with a stick. It is sentimental to the point of annoyance. The receptionist asks each viewer to fill out a form asking them to illustrate or describe an urge or desire they have that makes them fearful.

The second part is Game Over. In a separate room, viewers are seated in front of a television and video game console, and told to use an adapted toy pistol to shoot a werewolf as it appears on the screen. The pistol does not really work, and the video game is actually a fixed animation made to seem as though there are consequences to the actions of the viewer. Slowly the viewer realizes they have no control over their own death in the video game.

Treatment Room comes directly after the videogame. Viewers are led into a tiny space blocked off from the rest of a large room by a wall constructed from scrap wood and doors. They are told that: 1) a baby werewolf is being trained for ‘pure evil’ and 2) they should shoot him with a slingshot if he does anything good or nice. A television is situated on a shelf in a wardrobe; the television shows the first-person viewpoint of the werewolf. During the performance, a slit opens in the wardrobe, exposing the werewolf. Some viewers chose this moment to begin shooting the werewolf as instructed, some disregarded the instructions and fired at will, while others refrained completely.

I tried getting in touch with Sam Easterson to see what kind of cameras he uses and how he attaches them to large wild animals like wolves, and small nearly weightless animals like chicks. I wanted to know about power, transmission, and hardware, but he replied that he is short on time and cannot answer my questions. I hope he finds the time soon…

On a slightly different and somewhat less appetizing note, neuroscientist John Chapin at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn has been affixing cameras to rats for search and rescue missions, as well as to locate bombs. The rats, however, are remote controlled via direct neural interface, with electrodes attached to the portion of the brain that reads impulses from the whiskers, the most sensitive physical sensor on a rat. I heard a rumor from my friend Karl Cronin that rats with cameras had been used in the days following 9/11 to search for people trapped under the rubble.  I know dogs are very good at this task, but rats can navigate much smaller spaces and find their way back out again. Dogs trained in search and recover are divided into two categories through training, 1) search for living people, 2) search for dead people. The former is replaced by the latter after about three days of search because if a dog trained to find living people kept finding dead people it would place a huge amount of emotional stress on the dog, who expects a living person at the end of a search. The reward, in this case, is not a hot-dog, but a reunion with a stranger.

[click here to view larger size]

“He was thinking about the bread lady. The wind from the sea blew right through him, his fur might as well have been straw stuck to his skin with spit. Playtime was over. Hungry, cold, thirsty. The salt water and sand left his throat clenched, gritty. Professor Echo wanted to see old lady who used to feed him bread in that town, down by the bar, long ago. He would sit and place his paw on her lap and smile, she would deposit a spongy morsel into his mouth. She talked to him in high pitches and scratched him behind the ear when he leaned his head on her thigh. “Good Professor, good.” She was good, her bread was good. And she looked like a sheep.

That town was very far away. Home was closer. Home was a nice house with wooden walls, in the lee but not the shade, and rosemary grew in the yard. The neighbors were friendly and there were other dogs to play with. But despite the exceptional luck of luxury, something made him uneasy, morbid– nothing could be so good and not break sometime– cracks were already showing– or was it all just his imagination? For some dogs, imagined worlds are just as real as the sun.

The shore curved gently in the direction of home as though it was a path just for him. The shore also curved in the opposite direction, continuing the same line around the bay. Given the disquiet and anticipation Professor Echo had to go back to, the opposite direction with its unknowns and dangerous consequences held more promise. Yet he would not go that way. New people to meet, new experiences, yes, but he didn’t have the energy to start over once again. In some ways, he was stuck with what he had because he’d had it for so long. As the saying goes, old dogs can’t learn new tricks. The rhythms of the shore made him think.

Professor Echo had no enemies on the outside. If they were, how easily they could be vanquished. There was a bowl of fresh water waiting for him at home.”

“Professor Echo was a cocky recluse. Or so it seemed. No one knew where he came from. His past was shadowy though rumors spread that he was related to a saluki. It was not apparent that terrible things had been done to him, and that he’d done them too. He had no remorse anymore. The things Professor Echo wanted to do were the things he wouldn’t, and the things he needed were the things he should go without. He had no remorse. There was a time when that dog could grieve for people he didn’t know, and could let loose long enough that a chuckle or a smile appeared almost natural. For a while, rousing games with others made him less self-conscious; crepuscular hunting trips made him feel more alive. The hunting trips alluded to quiet moments in puppyhood when he was alone, thinking about death, and sometimes dying. Apples in his throat and leaves in his eyes. At some point he decayed, all husk and loose fur, the dust of fathers and mothers unsettled. Time passed. People came and went, some stayed, others faded into the scenery, grimacing. Professor Echo lurched on, untamed, the ghost in the dunes. A cut on his toe– it could get infected. He would have liked to feel misunderstood but he was simpler than that, like a rock in the sand wanting to know how the flow goes in order to go with it. Someone said his discomfort with convention grew unbearable and wanderlust took over. Another one said the rain got in but couldn’t get out. He’d gone too far on his own path and it was unattractive. The pit inside of him was too hard be chewed, to big to be disgorged.”

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The 2nd assignment in Physical Computing class is to design and draft a fantasy device. It doesn’t need to work or even be in the realm of possibility, but it does need to fit into some criteria of functionality, or usefulness.  Naturally, I incline towards interactive solutions for cats. However, nothing can replace the mutual pleasure a cat and human can feel when they play together. This toy is not meant to replace the one-on-one real interaction, but to supplement or enhance it.

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