Kristin Lucas in Conversation with Beatrix Ruf
2000
from exhibition catalogue“Are you still blam?: Temporary Housing for the Despondent Virtual Citizen”, O.K Center for Contemporary Arts Upper Austria, Linz
BR: You address in your work (videos, installations, performances and web projects) the complex relationships of the human body, experience and behaviour in interaction with communication media, automation, machines in general, and the fast growing effects of technology on our behavioural patterns. Yet you are also heavily using exactly those elements in your work. How do you deal with distance and involvement? How does it shape your work, life, subject...
KL: Today I am responding to your questions while watching television, making dubs, and breaking every 10 minutes to check my email or surf the web. The other day I was typing while the electricity was being rewired throughout my apartment. It takes a lot of skill to concentrate within these noisescapes and I'm not sure that this skill is actually applicable in the big picture (maybe to the CIA or to a telemarketing agency?). However, I feel strongly about the need to saturate myself in this multi-channel environment. I begin a dialogue from within - an investigation into total immersion. I think there are real advantages to positioning oneself within the system as long as you take good notes. It can be relatively easy to lose one's sense of self.
intentional re-routing of information
As a people, how aware are we of the breadth of our contribution to our environment? Our landscapes have been re-constructed to provide electrical and data transfer provisions to our homes. We have introduced antibiotics, birth control and fertility pills to our immune systems. Ecologies have shifted, disappeared, and been re-invented. The food we consume has likely been genetically altered. The air that we breath has been either enhanced with insecticide, deodorizers, and car emissions, or else it has been artificially re-circulated into the environment by way of plastic filter units. It seems counter-productive to draw lines between fiction and reality now.
"Video and computers have an intrinsic relationship to mass media and the military. Therein lies potential for the critique of these structures. Video is a medium within which I simulate possible relationships/maneuvers. I concentrate on the fields that I operate within, and those that surround me. I am exposed to more fields than I care to acknowledge and I have chosen to make work about this, but this does not mean that others will, or that my ideas are meaningful or truthful with research to back them up. I simulate the environments, real and imagined, to get to the questions."1
I deal with the distance and involvement by convincing myself that notions of reality are self-serving, and these notions are subject to change.
BR: One reoccurring element of your work is that you use yourself as a fictional character who is highly receptive to all electromagnetic fields, waves, vibes and influences by invisible signals that surround us and create our environment. It sounds like a media-enhanced allergy - the world is full of viruses, microscopic bacteria, and invisible influences that affect us constantly.
KL: Yes...I have been making work about invisible energy patterns and because of this I have developed a reputation as a conflict consultant. One young woman recently confided in me that she experiences ringing in the ears, but only when she passes through a particular intersection in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She asked me what I thought might be contributing to this. I initially speculated that she might have a liver-chi stagnation problem but was later concerned that she might have an allergy to data transference. There are a lot of telephone lines running along that particular intersection. I then suggested that she keep one foot on the ground at all times, drink a lot of water, supplement her diet with a shot of wheatgrass once a week, and avoid that intersection if at all possible.
imagining what happens between A and B
simulations
notions
potential
"Lately I have begun to notice the many fields that I pass through in a day, the interference and transmissions that affect my stream of consciousness. How much am I affected by these signals, subliminally, curiously physically? I have walked home enough times, down the same path, that turns go unnoticed, as if I have turned over the controls and am operating on autopilot. Who is in control now? What are the sources of influence that play out upon my body at this time? As I loosen the grip, do I increase my vulnerability to outside forces?
I wonder what the odds are for a mobile phone or a fax to share the same frequency as a neurotransmitter within my brain. A pager goes off and I raise a brow. Someone programs their microwave to thaw a frozen dinner and I wind up exiting the subway two stops too soon. I'm a giant radio-controllable buffoon."1
BR: How do you see our memory and memory structures being influenced by our perceptions of space and time? On our perceptions of the self, the body image, and the psychological image?
are humans affected psychologically and neurologically by energy patterns in our environment?
blind acceptance
ambiguity
ambivalence
coincidence
logic
rogue robots
KL: Because of the integration of computers into our lifestyles, we are more likely than ever to be following paths that have been predetermined for us. (Turn on computer, use pull down menu, double click on icon...) It has become an art form in itself, eliminating as many steps as possible from our routines. I think the answer to the first half of your question lies in how these routines affect our behaviour outside of the computer interface? Remember the Tokai Village nuclear plant accident in Japan in October 1999? The workers manual had recently been abbreviated, condensed to increase worker productivity. They were not trained properly about the strength of the materials they were using, nor were they trained properly on what to do in the event of an accident.
"As video and computer animation become more prevalent, and we see our own images reproduced more often, we venture further into the illusion that the reproduction is the truer self and become increasingly more fascinated with self-improvement and super-human qualities. When contemplating our image on the screen, we witness an emptiness, a hollowness. Our instinct is to reach for the refresh button."1
Is it possible for a young woman to possess the power to erase chips without the aid of a machine? Doubtful, but if this mutation occurs she will be legendary.
BR: Have the interfaces, the borders from body and machine already changed? Where are the filters and where is the access?
KL: "I have adopted a frame of vision, which is different than the cone of vision that I learned about in junior high school science class. This frame serves as a filter through which I am able to identify and classify, weed out the odd and unnecessary bits of information that might otherwise cloud my judgement. Somewhere along the line I downloaded pattern recognition software for my brain. There are days that I forget what it feels like to have invented my own thoughts. I spend more time organizing my desktop than I spend organizing my desktop." 1
Remember to dump your cache now and then, and don't eat too many cookies.
BR: Tell us about some of your projects that are interesting in this context...
KL:
Cable Xcess: This is a public service announcement/infomercial, which informs viewers about the consequences of long-term exposure to electromagnetic fields. I perform as both spokesperson and case study, transmitting a pirate broadcast through my body (body as satellite), educating viewers about early signs of exposure, and sharing alternative methods for coping with contamination.
Watch out for invisible Ghosts: Equipped with helmet, goggles, and a basic understanding of early video game strategies, I morph into an adventureland training camp where I meet with media icons on common ground. This video performance parallels the heightened sense of anxiety that is contiguous with computer games, amplifying “fear of contamination” to a level that borders on insanity.
Host: In this video, a young woman participates in an on-line therapy session directed by the system operator of a streetside multimedia kiosk. The system operator is capable of multi-tasking like a computer--moderating the flow of traffic over the internet, simultaneously monitoring all aspects of the broadcast. As I indulge in a virtual conversation about a troublesome relationship, the session instantly becomes an amalgamation of daytime television and tabloid, wherein the surveillance camera becomes the eye of the media.
I play the roles on both sides of the screen. My script dismantles the concept of the modular databody with dry humour, satirizing relationships between body and machine that are inherent within technical language (aging/obsolescence, implants/upgrades, and amnesia/memory loss). The ending parallels the mundane routine of a bank transaction, yet with the seriousness of religious propaganda, "If you would like to save your life...enter your initials. To exit this program…use the escape button."
BR: In Installation (detail), 1997, you create a space, almost a plaza, by using sound elements of cell phones, beepers, fax and modem transmissions, television and radio, and internet chatroom texts. It creates the overlapping of an “old-fashioned” experience of real space with the dream of the unlimited technology-enhanced space of communication technologies and the Internet...
KL: I wanted to uncover a history of data technology, the stuff that gets covered up under new innovations as well as layers of paint and drywall. Not just the routing of cables, but the informational residue - active and left behind - media ghosts such as emails that never made it to their destinations. I am listening to the voices of failure and achievement and bringing them to the surface. Installation (detail) is a sound installation. The patterns on the wall are derivative of constellations (Orion, Cancer, Gemini, etc.) and circuit board patterns with speakers as their stars. The various sounds fade in and out as they travel through this virtual mapping of the electronic dream. Through this process, I expose the romantic (Western) vision of applying new technologies to uncharted territories, such as the internet. The sounds are hypnotic and disorienting, pulling one back and forth between fiction and reality.
BR: Your work also dramatizes the ambiguity of acting as the operator of technologies and at the same time being operated by those technologies.
KL: I would like to remain ambivalent to that question. I choose not to define the relationship between Kristin the artist and Kristin the actor. This is what keeps me coming back to this method of production. This ambiguity leaves the work open for multiple readings by an audience. I intentionally play with the relationship between producer and actor and I keep in sight the connections and ambiguities that surface. As a result my work is full of contradictions.
"Take for example the popularity of television talk shows. The average viewer has a sophisticated awareness of the complexity of the information and actions that are being staged. The stage becomes the canvas for experience. The viewer already knows that the experience has been rehearsed. This makes the story that much easier to absorb. Its parts are familiar. It is not that the story itself is sad to listen to. It is that the producers have broken the story into sound and emotive bytes that are easily reconstructed for the audience. The guest has come to the camera to have the experience. To measure the empathy passed down through audience participation. The story is made for the audience, and the attachment comes out of an appreciation for a well told story. The story does not have the same kind resonance without undergoing the reconstruction. The camera acts as the interface between the viewer and the guest." 1
BR: Game aesthetics play an important role in your work as well... Is there a fascination of "Kitsch" in the world technology?
KL: Lisa, my 8th grade lab partner and I made a computer program that scrolled up the screen, paused, and then blinked the words "I Love Rock and Roll" in ASCII characters. I remember being mesmerized then; I still am. The next thing I knew we were spending our lunch money everyday playing PacMan and Donkey Kong at the Electric Donut. I suppose I cling to those memories because, like most people, I still have unresolved issues and awkward feelings surrounding the social pressures of high school. I suppose that I have nostalgia for being able to download my own anxiety onto characters in role playing games.
On screen: Isis, Shazaam, Wonder Woman, The Greatest American Hero, Knight Rider, Gladiators, Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Zena Warrior Princess and Pokéman. When we were younger, we were more fearless, our brains worked faster, our learning curves were higher.
BR: How is the web restructuring your experience of space and time, your way of thinking?
KL: "Each day we step through an exercise in watching: waiting for, imagining, sifting through, and absorbing for the sake of entertainment or information. Are we aware how much our behavior is related to what we see? Are we aware that what we see effects how we behave?
I know exactly where to position myself on the subway platform so that when I enter and exit the subway car, I wind up directly in front of the turnstile for a swift getaway. Economization of time and energy." 1
Language is changing. Instead of small talk and sound bytes, we have bookmarks, incomplete thoughts and figures of speech that conform to the protocol of search bots. We are stuck in a holding pattern, conducting a "search" for lack of a better word. We buy Dummy's paperback guides for everything. As with associative thinking, we learn to communicate in key words. There are more answers than there are questions, and they can all be found in places like "Talkin' Trash in Texas" and "The Palace".
human socialization and behavioral patterns surrounding machine interaction
human expectations from machines
what our expectations are and how they determine how we react to our experiences with machines:
disappointment, success, failure, fear, anxiety
BR: In "Between a Rock and a Hard Drive", your web project for the DIA foundation, you use the metaphor and the real image of the waiting room...
KL: "Parking lots, checkout lines, airports, shopping centers, and lobbies are among the backdrops Kristin Lucas employs in this project for Dia's web site, "Between a Rock and A Hard Drive". The inanimate objects in these places of passage and waiting become the actors in Lucas's vignettes, reciting dialogue in speech bubbles and balloons culled by this young American artist from online chat transcripts. Surrounding each scene is a mutated keyboard, which produces sound effects including audible fragments of chat and site-specific sounds. Unique audio compositions can be made with each move of the mouse. The only functions of the keyboard which remain constant from scene to scene are the escape key, which advances the viewer through each scene (whether the Service Station, the Concession Stand, or the Hospitality Suite) and the FAQ key. FAQ pages are a common practice on websites and in newsgroups where frequently asked questions are answered. Lucas's FAQ, however, tends to raise more questions than it answers." 2
Using several conventions of the World Wide Web, I created a series of 56 waiting rooms: temporary housing for the despondent virtual citizen. The idea for this project came out of an awareness of the amount of time one spends in a day waiting. Waiting for the fax to come through, for the laundry to complete its cycle, in line at the ATM, on hold on the telephone... waiting for computers and machines in general to perform their tasks. In keeping with the trend of online banking and investing, I have incorporated online waiting.
"Between a Rock and a Hard Drive",
BR: In your web project "Involuntary Reception", you start with an introduction, telling us about your experience with the electromagnetic field and how it is affecting your life. Also about the fact that you can't record your own image by video but that you are able to self-broadcast via satellite. You also introduce "personal" information about yourself: about your pet, your favorite vacation places, friends and obsessions and you ask for and offer interactivity, friendship, communication... It seems you address a lot of web-created realities like chatrooms, intimacy and isolation, directness and "real" relationships, playfulness, paranoia, unlimited representation of the self, self-exhibiting and real social contacts, surveillance, the influences of ubiquitous visibility and resistance etc. Can you tell us something about this project and also about your understanding of some of those subjects?