#interact2connect

Using slow-shutter photography on my iPhone, I captured images of women at an Ethiopian festival in Rome.  With the aid of various apps I then painted with and on my iPhone screen to create six artworks which I have had printed onto cloth cut from traditional Ethiopian shawls. These artworks make up my new series #interact2connect.

There is a short background to this in my last blog “Linda in Wanderland”. 

The almost see through, gauze like cloth of the shawls results in the pieces being fairly transparent.  The figures in them seem to be moving in a space/time beyond past, present and future, or simultaneously in all. As a cloth is held up, it interacts with the surroundings it finds itself in, incorporating objects or people that are behind it. This evokes different emotions in the viewer. We are reminded too that everything is connected. 

 

This is a photo of one of the shawls shortly after it was printed. 

I would very much like to display these pieces as an installation in a gallery. 

 

Each piece would be hanging draped on the gallery wall when encountered, but visitors to the gallery would be encouraged to take down an artwork, hold it open and even walk around with it, thus allowing the figures in it to interact with the surrounding architecture, art and space. 

At this point another dimension would be added.  Because I believe that the physical and online worlds can no longer be viewed as entirely separate, visitors would be requested to take photos with these pieces and share them via social media with the hashtag #interact2connect and any other hashtags they might wish to add. 

In this way both the ethereal figures in the artworks and the individual sharing the photo would simultaneously be entering the realm of cyberspace - the mindspace we find ourselves in when we connect online.  

Later when other images shared under this hashtag are seen, the possibility would exist to make new and interesting connections by engaging with others who, regardless of their physical location or time zone, have shared their archived experience of the event, or commented on a photo.

As I have used current technology to create the artworks, it is my wish that the heart of the art of this installation will be found in the connections made through online sharing.

The vibrant patterns on the borders of the shawls are a stark reminder of the beauty to be found in diversity within unity, and the harmony of the colors asks us to question how we view the other.

The age of connectivity calls for transparency.  The gauze like cloth of the shawls asks us to question whether we are authentic when online.

#interact2connect would further raise the question of whether photography should be allowed in galleries and museums in an age when most people want to archive experiences using the technology at their disposal. 

Until such time that these pieces find themselves together in a gallery, I have decided that I will carry different ones with me when I am out and about, and ask people to hold them up in their surroundings once I have given them a short background.

 

This week while in Dubai with two instagrammers, Nilufer and Femi, I allowed the first piece to make its debut in the new phase of City Walk.  That the venue included the word “walk” felt appropriate, and it was wonderful to see the background glass shining through, and the reflected green wall pick up the color of the one ladies’ dress. There even seemed to be similar shades of orange and yellow to the colors in the border of the shawl.  

 

The next day I asked a waiter in a cafe to hold up the same piece.  Ernesto willingly obliged.  I had seen beforehand that there were artworks up on the wall behind him but I only realized afterwards that they were of three women too! The green skirt of Maria Callas on the wall also picked up the color of the transparent lady on the right and the chairs behind the cloth, despite themselves being stationary, added a sense of movement to the transparent figures. 

 

Who knows what further journeys the figures in these cloths will make, and what connections they will lead to.

I wait with anticipation :) 

---oOo---

Related: To see one of the journeys the figures have made, check out this steller story!

Artist Talk at Viewings 1

A new series of events called "Viewings", dedicated to experiencing the dynamic relationship which occurs when art is vewed without the intellect of mind, has opened in the ARTROM Network artist presentation space in Rome, Italy.

When we stand in front of a work and simply see and feel, a personal dialogue begins ... an intimate relationship. After all art is communication. ~ Elizabeth Genovesi, Founding Director, Artrom Network.

As one of the participating artists with my #here2here series, I was privileged to be at the Vernissage Party of Viewings 1, and to also take part in the Artist Talk Series.

I am happy to share here, the talk I gave at this event:

My love of photography began as a small child. I had a tiny box camera and would line up my neighbourhood friends with their arms folded across their chests to take their photos. I also loved communicating - I probably spoke too much in class :) I set up a home telephone system - a little switch board with lots of wires and two other phones - that was a gift designed for children, throughout our house and would proudly call my Dad in the morning when I woke because I knew that that meant he would bring me tea in bed before I went to school. I loved technology. I once took my transistor radio to school, put it in my blazer pocket and then through a tiny hole in my pocket, (not sure where the hole came from!) had the wire of the earphone go up under my blazer into my ear under my one pony tail. Eventually I acquired a walkie talkie. When I learnt to drive I made sure I had a CB radio - a citizens band radio - in my car and at home and would spend evenings chatting to unknown people far away.

My curious nature meant that I read a lot, and my mother says she would often find me reading a book, with only one sock and shoe on when I was supposed to be getting ready for school.

When I started my website four years ago in April 2011, I had two topics I wanted to write about. The first was technology and in particular cyberspace -the mindspace we find ourselves in when we communicate online. The second was mindfulness - paying attention in a particular way - on purpose, in the moment, non-judgmentally. Finding a suitable name for a website which covered these two seemingly very different issues proved interesting. After much thought and discussion the website here2here was born.

It referred to a non-located space beyond normal time and space where people could chat and exchange info - the place where your here met my here - here2here; and it was also a call to come out of autopilot and be totally present in the now - here2here.

I began to write about mindfulness and especially about the need to be mindful when using technology.

I had embarked on a photography project for myself, called mobileart. When I arrived in the UAE I was inspired by the stories of the bedouins who were nomads. Always on the move, they knew as they wandered through the desert what it was like to have a centre that would always be changing.

Using only my mobile phone, I would take photos of that which I found beautiful and share each one immediately via twitter enabling the photos to become mobile. I hoped too that the project would be a sharing of a consciousness on the move. There’s a video of the project on youtube.

Shortly after that I got my first iphone, posted my first picture on the 11th day of the 11th month 2011, on the then one year old Instagram, and shortly after that discovered a whole new world - the world of apps.

I began to follow blogs about them, gather them but most importantly experiment with them. On a daily basis. I still do that - the world of apps is fast moving and fast changing.

Realizing that cyberspace was very much like Baroque art where scenes flow into each other and into the space of the viewer with the viewer determining the centre of the spectacle at any moment in time, I started my first series entitled Digital Archways. Your here and many other heres are brought to my here via the interface of a screen but I can choose what I pay attention to and also how I give it my attention.

I had also started photographing the skyscrapers of Dubai at the time, and so using photos of Dubai architecture, looked more at the architecture of cyberspace, and created the abstract series called Corridors of Cyberspace.

All of these visual expressions began to accompany and add to my writing.

Communicating and sharing visual outcomes online became a great source of encouragement.

The major turning point in my work, came, I believe, when I began to experiment with slowshutter photography on my iphone. A flaneur by nature, I was often out walking and so I began taking photos of people whose energy somehow spoke to me. I don’t know how else to express that. Remember: The longer a camera’s shutter remains open the more light it takes in!

The capturing of these moments called for me to be very alert and aware, so this form of photographing not only flowed out of my mindfulness practice but also became a mindfulness practice in its own way.

Excited by the results I was getting, I began to take these images one step further and intuitively, using various apps, give them a painterly effect.

I edit the slowshutter image with apps. I create my own textures on an app. These are blended into aspects of the image on another app. I add atmosphere with other apps and I actually “paint” on my iphone screen with others. I have learnt to work on resolution using an app and I even have an app which is like a miniature laboratory telling me more about the megapixels and megabytes of each image. This became important when I realized I wanted to print large scale.

I have over a period of time come to realize that these artworks embody much that is important to me: Rootedness and Movement occurring simultaneously, Emptiness and Fullness, Essence and Presence. They are not only a visual portrayal of a non-located space, whether it be cyberspace or the space where everything comes into being, but also call one to be mindful, aware and present. In them my writing, my intentions, my love of photography, my love of art in all its forms, have all come together and found expression. For this reason, this series here to be viewed and experienced in Rome is a very special one for me.

When working with these images, I often feel as if the outcome is simply moving through me, and so I believe that each one will speak when and how it is meant to.

I have included the hashtag in the title of this series #here2here, as just as hashtags bring data from all over into one place, so the artworks in this series come together to acknowledge diversity on many levels, but at the same time call out for respect of the other, encouraging the knowledge that we are all more similar than we realize. The crossing over of the lines in the symbol for a hashtag are a reminder of our interconnectedness and interbeing.

The artworks are printed onto wood in Germany. On a visit there, while looking at different ways to present my work, I came across a young artist who had recently started out printing in this field and was also eager to support other artists. Our here2here collaboration has been a pleasure so far. The fact that the artworks are printed on wood is a reminder to me to stay grounded. What is more rooted than a tree? But despite its groundedness a tree has life flowing through it all the time in a myriad of ways.

Rootedness, Movement, Emptiness, Fullness, Essence, Presence.

#here2here

The series can be viewed on my art website or below via youtube:

At the end of the talk I also gave a demonstration of how augmented reality could possibly be used with art.

Holding my ipad up to one of the artworks on the wall, I scanned it using the Layar app and then chatted about what appeared on my screen.

The City Within

Walking through the Dubai Mall my attention was captured by an exhibit in the entrance of Bloomingdale’s Home. Upon entering I immediately felt as if I had entered another realm. Soaking up the space I attempted to capture aspects of the work on my camera roll.

I discovered that Bloomingdales’s Home is hosting a Design Days Dubai offsite installation until 16 April 2013.  The entrance has been transformed into an interactive work of art entitled “City Within”, by Antonio Pio Saracino

To quote the pamphlet which accompanies the exhibition:

“Composed of multiple hanging lightweight translucent polycarbonate sheets that create the shape of a box and convey the idea of an ephemeral city versus the physical city: this is the metaphor of the contemporary digital city that is not made with tangible space.  The empty space inside the installation is originated from carving out the shape of a dimensional city landscape”.

This resonated so deeply with much of what I attempt to share on my website here2here that I have returned on more than one occasion to enter the space. 

What fascinated me about the installation was the fact that the artist had carved out the shape of a dimensional city landscape to create the “City Within". He had created a physical landscape and a mental one which therefore enabled me to enter it with my body and my senses. 

The installation also confirmed that although the digital city is experienced, it nevertheless has its own architecture. As was the case in this work of art, existing architectural forms are often reference points for the indescribable characteristics of this city within. My writings often use arches and corridors when I refer to cyberspace and my iphoneography art is created using technology and photos of architecture. 

In my last blog post I looked at cyborgs, and so I was encouraged to read how architect, designer and artist Antonio Pio Saracino is creating visually poetic forms that encourage dialogue on the role of technology in our lived environment

"Technology is like a second ‘skin’ that we wear on to extend our bodies in order to re-imagine new behaviors and to enhance our memory and senses. It is increasingly central to human civilization and in my profession technology is an advanced tool used to re-imagine design and the world we live in. In my everyday life, I believe you have to know when to turn technology on and wear it and when to turn it off." The Ecstatic Design of Antonio Pio Saracino

"My work however also highlights some aspects that will never be affected by technology, in particular the quest for the most important things: sensitivity, poetry, our feelings. This is why I do not try to glorify or stigmatise technology, but rather to create emotion-provoking objects capable of representing the values associated with the product." Interview with Antonio Pio Saracino

Dialogue on the role of technology in our lives is essential. The recent conference, Wisdom2.0, is just one example of the advances being made in this dialogue. 

"The City Within" from "Corridorsofcyberspace"

Architecture is a response to physical, emotional and spiritual needs. It also reflects the way humans see themselves at a particular point in time. 

In the Baroque age, for example, the Baroque ideal was to represent emotional states of being. In Baroque art, scenes flow into each other and seemingly into the space of the viewer, who determines the centre of the spectacle at that moment. 

In cyberspace, we are able to enter streams of words, sounds and images and we choose what to focus on. The centre is constantly shifting. In the current transformation age cyberspace is in many ways baroque like as we attempt to portray the senses through technology. 

Saracino understands this. His keen insight into the need that exists in this age to experience rather than simply cognitively comprehend, has led to Saracino being involved in designs such as a recent one in midtown Manhattan where tweets were displayed on the interactive art installation in order raise awareness of HIV/AIDS

Living between Rome and New York, Saracino has experienced cross-cultural contamination. An architect, designer and artist, he cuts across disciplines. I am delighted to have discovered his work.  

Cyberspace or here2here, is definitely a city within. Every time we communicate by means of technology we enter this mental space. May we do so responsibly as we realize that we are co-creators, co-designers, co-architects and therefore co-artists of this special we-space. 

Technology and Transformation

Robb Smith, in a TEDx video entitled “The Transformational Life”, explains how throughout the ages the tools of the time have gone hand in the hand with the size of communities.

In the hunting and gathering era, the average size of a community was 40 people. When the digging stick was invented, plants could be cultivated and they provided food for a community of about 1500. The invention of the plow in the agrarian age supported a larger population of about 100 thousand people and the invention of machines such as the printing press and the steam engine in the industrial era of the 17th to 19th centuries, allowed societies to grow to about 10 million people.

This exponential growth continued with the invention of the transistor in 1947 and the computer revolution of the next decades. The early 1990s saw the coming into being of a world wide web of 100 million people. High speed data networks and the spread of smartphones mean that today almost 7 billion people have the possibility of becoming a single society.

We say the world has become smaller, but in actual fact communities have become larger.

As I walked from the metro one evening recently, white cords dangled from my ears and connected to my iphone which I carried in my right hand. The music which accompanied me paused briefly as I took an incoming call. A little while later I stopped to capture an image on my camera roll, and as I did so, I suddenly saw myself as if from afar. This was accompanied by an overwhelming thought - “I’m a cyborg now!”

The separation between being online and offline had suddenly disappeared. The boundary between these two worlds blurred and they suddenly collapsed into one.

No doubt the experience was greatly influenced by a fascinating TED talk, “We are all cyborgs now” by Amber Case, which I had recently watched, but nevertheless, I was filled with excitement and gratitude for the fact that I was living in an age where people can interconnect in real time by means of a little handheld device.

A 1960 paper on space travel defined a cyborg as an organism “to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments”.

It is interesting to note that whereas the invention of previous tools had enabled humans to extend their physical selves, current technology allows for the extension of the mental self.

“here2here” took on an added meaning as I realized that the “virtual” and the “real” world were no longer separate for me. They formed a wholeness which brought with it new dimensions I could not have imagined even five years ago.

"Avatars"

My iphoneography art is an attempt to express these dimensions. Created with apps, the outcome is not fixed at the start of the process. Patient flicking through numerous adaptations of an image I am working on allows me to intuitively choose the one I feel most appropriate. The end image is an expression of the experience of being in cyberspace, as well as an example of being a co-creator with the apps and technology at my disposal.

I look at this world as it looks back at me, and suddenly I am looking as the world.

This looking is accompanied by a deepening sense of responsibility and I am reminded of the question asked by Wisdom 2.0:

“How can we live with greater presence, meaning and mindfulness in the technology age?”

The objective of the conference, @Wisdom2conf, this year, was to address the challenge of our generation: “to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work and useful to the world.” I can highly recommend the 2013 videos. (One of my favorites is Jon Kabat-Zinn being interviewed by Melissa Daimler of Twitter).

The technology of this age brings with it the temptation of distraction and addiction when we do not realize the need to be grounded. Checking in with our inner and outward experience regularly and mindfully helps us to maintain this groundedness.

“Without a connection to the earth and to the physical body, all signals become static”. Steven Vedro in “Twitter, Ambient Awareness and Spiritual Practice”.

I share Robb Smith’s opinion. We are no longer in the Information age. We have entered the Transformation age with all the opportunities it offers us to look not at the other through all the perspectives being offered us, but as the other.

Related blog posts:

Digital Archways

Corridorsofcyberspace

Cyberflanerie: Deep Listening in Cyberspace

Corridors of Cyberspace

As familiar as we are today with the concept of a corridor, it is interesting to note that corridors did not exist before the late 17th century and only became widely used in the 19th century.

“Before their adoption, circulation flowed from one room to the next, forcing interactions and confrontations between the occupants of rooms, and those just passing through. Largely determined by socio-economic factors, political upheaval, and changing approaches to morality, corridors were invented to serve a very specific purpose. They were developed as a tool to separate different groups of people - the servants from the served, the jailed from the jailors ........” (Tad Jusczyk in Consider the corridor: lessons from architectural history)

Although people could now move more efficiently through buildings, rooms became a series of dead ends. The inventions of architects have social implications and the corridor has greatly influenced how we live, work and communicate.  

The study of the architecture of cyberspace is both relatively new and exciting. 

The minute we make use of a system which enables us to communicate despite our physical location, we enter the realm of cyberspace. In this plane, information is stored, processed and passed on. Inhabited by both machines and humans, time in this realm is otherworldly. Cyberspace cannot be seen with the human eye as it cannot be physically located.

Cyberspace is experiential, and its energies are mostly intuited. 

Words which make sense in the land we have come from, are often used to describe the architecture we find when we begin to explore cyberspace. However, because this new “territory” is experiential rather than actual, we often need new words to allude to that which cannot be seen or existing words take on new meanings.  

The term “corridor” has been used to describe the pathways filled with electricity that connect communication systems, but when it comes to the individual moving around in cyberspace the concept of a corridor becomes interesting.

The experience of cyberspace is very much more one of connectivity than separation. After spending some time there the individual gains the feeling of being a node on a hologram.  One feels part of a whole, but at the same time gets the feeling that the whole enters oneself. Individuals come right into one’s mind-space via word and image, and we enter theirs.  People, places and happenings arrive before one’s eyes in realtime and sharing is key.  

And whereas each web page is a separate room and can be just that if the one entering it  so wishes, it is simultaneously a corridor with many other rooms opening off it via the links it offers. The choice lies with the user who becomes the chief architect of that space and moment. 

The clicking of a link can be equated to stepping into a corridor, but the end destination of the corridor is not necessarily fixed or known upon entering it. Its length is not fixed either.   Reading something can be abandoned midway to answer an incoming mail or check on a social media site filled with an exponential number of connections and available links. Time seems to fly in this plane and one can get lost in the same sense one used to do when reading a good book.  

Corridors in everyday architecture have become associated with mystery and sometimes danger. Online “corridors’’ have their lurkers too and obviously vigilance is required when navigating cyberspace. 

“Corridor” has a root meaning of running, but cyberspace is associated with incredible speed. If its corridors exist they flash by. 

Online “corridors” are like the arcades and passageways of malls which offer merchandise, entertainment, and places to meet and spend time together. As cultures meet in these spaces, they stop to chat and share worldviews, and the world suddenly becomes much smaller. Expansion and contraction happen simultaneously. 

 

I am by nature rather curious and love investigating new areas (see Linda in Wonderland). Words fascinate me (see Langu age). Until a new term for it is coined, and even if it is not, I am happy to be a digital nomad, an online surfer, a cybernaut or whatever else I might be named, in the realm referred to in this blog as the “Corridors of Cyberspace”.  

Related articles:

Digital Archways

Social Media - Bridging Cyberspace

Light Through - Electronic Stainglass

Whirling Dervishes - Lessons for Cyberspace

PRT, Paternoster Lifts, Cyberspace And Mindfulness

Filtering

Linda in Wonderland

Cybeflanerie: Deep Listening in Cyberspace

Tokyo2Dubai Collab