Exploring Physiology-Based Interactions in Performing Art Using Artistic Interventions / Kunstiliste sekkumiste kasutamine füsioloogiapõhiste interaktsioonide uurimiseks etenduskunstis

Technological innovations like physiological computing offer new possibilities when exploring audience-performer interaction. To avoid technological solutionism that often accompanies biosensor applications in performing art, an artistic interventions approach was used. This paper describes a recent art-science residency consisting of three artistic experiments: the audience’s electrodermal, activity-driven soundscape in a dance improvisation, a “lie detector” applied to the actor just after the performance, and a heart-rate-driven personal discotheque installation. Both artist and scientist provide reflections on future development of this transdisciplinary field from the performing art perspective. Nüüdisaegne interaktiivne teater toetub tehnoloogilistele uuendustele ja järjest enam kasutatakse uusi tehnoloogiaid ka kunstiteose sisu loomisel: on need siis vaatajate reaktsioone tajuvad riided, voogteatri etendus või vaatajate neurofüsioloogilisi reaktsioone mõõtvad sensorid. Etenduskunstnik Taavet Jansen ja neuroteadlane Aleksander Väljamäe töötasid publiku ja esinejate füsioloogiliste reaktsioonidega kunstiteaduse residentuuris Tallinna Ülikoolis veebruarist 2019 kuni juunini 2019. Füsioloogilisi reaktsioone uuriti kolme kunstilise eksperimendi jooksul või järel ning see artikkel kirjeldabki neid eksperimente, kunstniku mõtisklusi oma uurimisreisist ja arutleb, kuidas selliseid interaktsioonivõimalusi saaks kasutada voogteatri platvormidel. Iga kirjeldatud eksperimendi kohta avaldavad autorid ka oma mõtteid ja teevad ettepanekuid, mida eksperimendi kordamisel võiks teha teistmoodi. Kunstilises eksperimendis „Neurokoreograafiline eksperiment nr 4“ kasutati interaktiivset lahendust, kus neljale vaatajale kinnitatud sensorid mõõtsid nende erutuse taset (electrodermal activity galvanic skin response) improvisatsioonilise tantsuetenduse vältel Tallinnas, Kanuti Gildi SAALis 06.06.2019. Vaatajate reaktsioone kasutati reaalajas helikujunduse manipuleerimisel. Selline interaktiivne lahendus tekitas kunstiliselt intrigeeriva tagasiside-efekti, kus vaatajate tahtmatud reaktsioonid hakkasid mõjutama kogu lavastuse tervikut. Vaatajad said tahtmatult endale „hääle“, mida said interpreteerida kõik osalised kogu terviku kontekstis. Kunstilises eksperimendis „Macbeth“ kasutati erutust mõõtvaid sensoreid, salvestamaks näitleja reaktsioone intervjuu ajal, kus esitati küsimusi tema rolliloome kohta etenduses, mis oli lõppenud 10 minutit enne intervjuu algust. Tegemist oli Alo Kõrve Macbethi rolliga Tallinna Linnateatri lavastuses „Macbeth“. Prokurör Steven-Hristo Evestuse läbi viidud intervjuu eesmärgiks oli mõista, milliseid tehnikaid kasutab näitleja oma rolli luues, ning tehnoloogiat kasutades analüüsida, kas näitleja on teadlik laval tehtud otsustest. Heli- ja valgusinstallatsioon „Heartrate Party“ põhines kontseptsioonil, kus külastaja südamerütm mõjutas kogu installatsiooni heli- ja valguskujunduse tempot. Südamerütmi mõõdeti spetsiaalse sensoriga ja kasutatud videokujundus nii instrueeris osalejaid kui ka andis tagasisidet õnnestumisest või ebaõnnestumisest. Installatsioon oli avatud Tallinnas, Kanuti Gildi SAALi keldrisaalis 05.–07.06.2020 ja seda külastas 20 vaatajat. aasta esimeses pooles, kui COVID-19 pandeemia põhjustas eriolukorra kogu maailmas, ei tohtinud teatrid ja etendusasutused avalikke üritusi korraldada. Teatrid hakkasid oma etendusi andma voogedastust võimaldavatel platvormidel. Kuna voogteater avab etenduste mängimiseks palju uusi võimalusi, siis me analüüsime residentuuris kasutatud kontseptsioone ka voogteatri perspektiivist. Kõiki eelpool mainitud kontseptsioone oleks võimalik osaliselt kanda üle ka veebikeskkonda, kuid need eeldavad kasutajapoolset tehnoloogilist valmisolekut. Sensortehnoloogiad võimaldavad voogteatri etenduste vaatajate reaktsioone ja käitumist analüüsida ja salvestada. Kuna nende tehnoloogiate kasutus sellises kontekstis on veel uus, siis küsimused, mis puudutavad eetikat ja isikuandmeid, vajavad alles väljatöötamist. Kokkuvõttes väidame, et väga palju uurimistööd on alles ees ja meetodid, kuidas interpreteerida esinejatelt ja vaatajatelt kogutud andmeid, on alles vaja välja töötada. Tihti kasutatakse andmeid interaktsiooni eesmärgil pigem otseseid tõlgendusi luues – biosignaalide numbriline väärtus tõlgitakse otse mõneks audiovisuaalses kujunduses oluliseks väärtuseks. Selline tõlgendus annab küll laval toimuvale perfektse sünkrooni, kuid vastust jääb ootama oluline küsimus, mida need andmed väljendavad, mida nad tähendavad. Kunstis jääb tihti puudu teoreetilistest teadmistest, mis aitaksid intuitiivselt tehtud kunstilisi otsuseid raamistada. Selline teadmiste ülekandmine kunsti ja teaduse vahel avaks uusi võimalusi kunstiteoste interpreteerimisel, aga ka teaduse rikastamisel.

Visit to Wëlakamike

In this fictional essay, two ethnographers visit Wëlakamike, a community started by a group of citizens who became disillusioned by the failure of nation states to reign in capitalism and manmade climate change. The researchers learn that the technologies and practices designed by community members are used to minimize harm to the environment by human activity while encouraging citizens to engage in spirited democratic practices and artistic interventions. As we articulate in our research statement, this futuristic utopian community is developed upon a critique of contemporary surveillance capitalism and its capacity to disenfranchise people, weaken democracy, and harm the environment.

Speaking to Power: The Problem of Enabling Subaltern Voices to Be Heard. A Case Study Concerned with Using the Arts to Engage with the Issue of Maternal Mortality in Western Kenya

In the context of consistently poor provision of state maternity services to impoverished women in western Kenya over many decades, this article discusses the use of arts in relation to researching subaltern perspectives and enabling subaltern voices to be heard by the powerful. The argument is made that behaviour change agendas are almost always top down, while requirements for the authorities to engage with subaltern voices are minimal and frequently resisted. Case studies are offered of two artistic interventions—a play and a documentary film, made in 2018 and 2019 respectively, which sought to engage medical authorities and the middle classes regarding the consequences of the, sometimes very weak, implementation of Kenya’s excellent policies in relation to maternal health for the poor. In conclusion, the question of how to more effectively enable the powerless to speak to power is discussed.

There Was So Much Silence Growing Up…: Artistic Interventions of Tomie Arai and Flo Oy Wong

This essay explores the specific artworks of Asian American artists Tomie Arai and Flo Oy Wong as complex articulations between culture, identity, history, and memory. Based on oral history interviews that were integral parts of their artistic processes, Arai and Wong created works that explored the family histories and memories of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans living in New York City’s Chinatown and California. Their artworks open up a space to explore memory as a way of knowing that is shaped not only by what is said, but more importantly by what is not said—by silences and secrets.

Transformation of Graphic into Conceptual Artist: Innovations, Games and Improvisations

The paper problematizes the work and evolution of a Bulgarian artist from the point of view of the biographical approach, his artistic interventions and his re-legitimization as a contemporary artist. It discusses various aspects of contemporary art from the point of view of the artist, his interventions, market demands, the underlying contradictions, as well as the transformative tendencies in the small graphics. The paper argues that it is necessary to expand the understanding of contemporary art with certain actions of artists.

Color in Selected Artistic Glass Compositions by Tomasz Urbanowicz as an Element of Intervention in Historic Buildings and Contemporary Architecture

Colored glass in the form of stained-glass windows has been used to decorate buildings for over a thousand years. Due to various late-twentieth-century technological achievements, this material allows for a broad spectrum of design solutions. Glass can be used both in contemporary and historical buildings. This paper presents an analysis of the work of Tomasz Urbanowicz, an artist who works with glass, and its objective is to present not only the body of work of this artist but also the means of using colored glass in creating new values in architecture. The work is based on a study of the literature that covers the contemporary application of colored glass, on-site analysis of projects, and a series of interviews with the artist before, during, and after project completion, as well as the authors’ personal experience in the matter. One of the main research methods used was an analysis of the artist’s stance, as to him, the very process of pursuing creative inspiration is a fundamental procedure. Glassworks by Urbanowicz were displayed at the EXPO 2000 in Hanover (Germany), the EXPO 2005 in Aichi (Japan), and the EXPO 2008 in Saragossa (Spain). The United Earth glass sphere has been decorating the agora of the European Parliament building in Strasbourg (France) since 2004. In the paper, the artist’s projects are presented in two groups: The first includes solutions that employ monochromatic color schemes, whereas in the second, color has been used to create a strong contrast. The analysis presented includes interventions in historical buildings under heritage conservation, but also compositions from architectural glass in newly built buildings and that reference place-based history. Both the initial vision and the final effect of the glass architectural compositions are site-specific. The analysis of these differences and how the artist works allowed us to formulate a scheme of how he operates. Urbanowicz’s glass interventions affect the quality of the spaces they create and highlight their existing or expected features. The influence of the works can either play a primary and dominant role in relation with the surrounding space or be a secondary and delicate addition. Applied color may have different functions, from highlighting specific aspects of a building to introducing symbolic or direct reference. In many projects, color works as a source of a building interior’s atmosphere. The artistic interventions in historic spaces emphasize their features without disrupting pre-existing authenticity, whereas contemporary projects with no historic reference offer a wide variety of color applications that focus on the function and form of architecture, landscape, or surroundings.

Power of the Temporary: Social Art in Spaces of Transitional Living

This communication paper addresses the role of ephemeral and temporary artistic interventions into the systemic problem of homelessness and the question of sustainability in social art practice. I approach these issues through my work with homeless service agencies that are shaped by rules and procedures intended to increase predictability, whereas, as an artist, my work resists such rigidity by carving out space for spontaneity, vulnerability, and renewal. The dilemma of sustaining socially engaged art long-term raises particular questions within the context of institutions such as these. Can a project be successful as a temporary intervention within systems of predictability? If a project does become sustainable in the long-term, is there a way it can retain a level of energy incited by newness and unexpectedness? I discuss these issues in the context of two of my long-term projects, Beauty in Transition (2013–2016) and Choreographing Care (2016–2021), both working within homeless service agencies. Beauty in Transition was a pop-up mobile hair salon offering free haircare for transitional housing residents. Choreographing Care, a project supporting homeless service staff, started as a socially engaged art project and was adopted into an emergency shelter in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A as an organizational initiative. The ideas I discuss in this paper are supported and inspired by disciplines of research including care ethics of Gilligan, social behavioral science of Goffman, and approaches to participation discussed by Helguera and Kaprow.

Systematic Design Applied in Outdoor Spatiotemporal Lighting

Outdoor lighting design consists of many different objectives, depending on the area that is illuminated. In addition, besides functional lighting, extra messages may be superimposed to a lighting configuration. This adds to the complexity of the lighting design. Furthermore, temporal variations in lighting may be used as an additional tool of expressivity. All the above require some basic training and also some familiarity with expression tools. In this work, a framework is given for seamless communication through lighting, including both spatial and temporal lighting patterns. To this end, two different kinds of time scales are considered, leading to case studies for both seasonal lighting and communication through rapid spatiotemporal differentiations in it. The framework is two-fold, allowing for both diagrammatic and quasi-algebraic elaboration, leading to interesting visual results and providing the first step towards optimization. Different cases of outdoor lighting are considered as case studies, namely façade lighting and glass cases. These are used to illustrate the applicability and the added value of the current framework, that is, the systematization of the lighting procedure taking into account artistic interventions, which can be considered an extension of utilizing semantics.

The Representation and Agency of Artistic Interventions in Community in Mainland China

Based on immersive participatory observation of the curatorial practice of the 2019 OCAT exhibition Rural Construction through Art in Shenzhen, we identified two modes of community-based artistic interventions: a cultural “governance/capital” intervention deeply embedded in the social structure and a collective experimental art production intervention dissociated from the social structure. However, both forms of “production art” are essentially “unities of opposites” integrating incorporation and resistance, consistent with the socialist art policy of promoting the flourishing of all types of arts. Though the aesthetic divide between “art for society’s sake” and “art for art’s sake” positions these artistic interventions in different places in society, we argue that the domain of Chinese contemporary art is shifting away from the studio and toward scenes, events, experience, and dialogue. The approach of “the era of mass art” also means that “art-as-resistance” is being legitimized as “art-as-incorporation” in a subtle but unremitting way.

The square, the monument and the re-configurative power of art in postmigrant public spaces

This chapter explores how art in public spaces shapes, and is shaped by, disagreements and conflicts resulting from the need to tackle »togetherness in difference« (Ien Ang), and how contemporary artistic practices play out in postmigrant public spaces, understood as plural domains of human encounter impacted by former and ongoing migration, and by new forms of nationalism. The chapter focuses on two art projects in Copenhagen, Denmark. The first one is The Red Square, a part of the public park Superkilen in the multicultural Nørrebro district. Designed by the artist group Superflex (in collaboration with architects from Bjarke Ingels Group and Topotek1), Superkilen opened in 2012. The second project is Jeannette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle's collaboration on the sculpture I Am Queen Mary. Installed outside an old colonial Warehouse in Copenhagen harbour in 2018, it is the first monument in the country to commemorate Danish colonialism and complicity in the transatlantic slave trade. Borrowing a term from Chantal Mouffe, these projects could be characterized as »agonistic« interventions into public urban space. The chapter argues that they may provide us with some much-needed answers to the important question of the much debated yet crucial role of public art in democratic societies, particularly how works of art may form a possible loophole of escape from dominant discourses by openly contesting, or subtly circumventing, monocultural understandings of national heritage and identity, thereby helping us to imagine national and urban community otherwise, i.e. as postmigrant communities. The chapter examines what the re-configurative power of art might accomplish in postmigrant public spaces by considering the following questions: How can public art open up a social and national imagination pervaded by anxieties about (post)migration to other ways of thinking about diversity and collective identity? Furthermore, is it possible to identify a common pattern - i.e. a particular postmigrant strategy - that underpins and interconnects various types of artistic interventions into public spaces and debates, which, on the surface, present themselves as radically different kinds of projects?