Sky Noise Polaroids Essay

Companion essay submitted during post-grad studies @ Griffith Uni, Brisbane 2002,
for the short film, Sky Noise Polaroids.
by Jean Poole

“..the revolutions in telecommunications, media, intelligence gathering, and information processing they unleashed have coincided with an unprecedented sense of disorder and unease, not only in societies, states, economies, families, sexes, but also in species, bodies, brains, weather patterns, ecological systems. There is a turbulence at so many scales that reality itself seems suddenly on edge.”
 – Sadie Plant – pp45-6, Zeros + Ones (1998)

‘We no longer have roots, we have aerials’
-McKenzie Wark, email signature.

Where are you when on the phone?
Unanswerable easily, this simple question beeps at the heart of ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’. Resonant with current quests to understand disembodiment and ‘being online”, the query also foregrounds the changing cultural negotiations of the information age, crystallised by Castells as a shift from ‘the space of places’ to ‘the space of flows’ ( 1996: 423 ). Cultural production of identity and meaning becomes emphasised in a ‘space of flows’. This process highlights the need for access to media and production tools. ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’ addresses these changing cultural conditions, and was developed within the networks it was exploring.

The parallel developments of affordable home video production technologies and networked communities of artists suggest a wider set of possible movies, and a wider set of approaches to video making. Although alluring, the challenge of exploring and widening these sets, and the challenge of collaborating on a video production with global contributors presents many creative, technical and continuity problems. I resolved some of these with two shortcuts. I scripted the use of a mobile phone as a plot device central to the ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’. And I decided when somebody is on the phone, they are on a rooftop.

Networks & Creativity
So familiar a technology for accessing global networks is the telephone, that it now symbolises intimate two-way communication. For this reason the telephone is a potent reminder of the communication rather than media delivering capacities of the internet. Harnessing the collaborative possibilities of online networks can creatively extend video making much more than can merely utilising the internet to mimic traditional broadcasting media or find new distribution channels, as liberating as this may be for an independent video producer. Creativity can be employed with networks, as well as within networks.

Believing that technological tools can be used to generate a more participatory culture through processes such as shared storytelling and community building, Margot Lovejoy is an advocate of communication as art ( 97: pp212-246 ). Before this idea was popularised through internet activities, telecommunications as art was explored by many artists wishing to generate new contexts for art ( Wilson 91), mapping possibilities with the telephone system, teleconferencing, fax art, telepresence, networked performance and dance, and the satellite video performances of video artists such as Nam June Paik. Stephen Wilson outlines these practices comprehensively at his site, whilst offering internationalism, real-time interaction from different locations, anonymity, multi-person exchange and commentary on cultural aspects of telecommunications as good reasons for exploring telecommunications art.

Surveillance, voyeurism and public vs private space are common themes amongst telecommunications art. Examplary exploration of these themes include audio works by artists such as Negativland and Scanner, the latter of who makes an appearance in ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’. Robin Rimbaud gained the performance name Scanner after ‘scanning’ the airwaves and recording conversations for use in his music. The telephone was used in another way by Golan Levin, whose large-scale concert performance Dialtones, was produced through the carefully choreographed ringing of the audience’s own mobile phones. The equivalent sampling of airwaves for artistic purposes in the visual realm is much less prevalent. Cold Cut, Emergency Broadcast Network and Lucky People Center are notable pioneers in this area over the last decade. The Surveillance Camera Players of New York perform surveillance related theatrical pieces under public security cameras, bringing art into public places and drawing attention to public issues.

Above these technical capacities of interaction, sampling and delivery, I am especially interested in the ways social and cultural exchanges via formal or informal artistic online networks, can lead to deeper interactions between people for creative purposes. While the technology is fascinating, the people that connect through it, and the new collective processes made possible are much more fascinating, and ripe territory for exploration.

Collaborative writing has enjoyed a boost within the online environment, evident within co-edited websites, interwoven group discussions on newsgroups, bulletin boards, email lists and hypertext which offers new approaches to writing and it’s reception. Non-linear and modular video pieces have been explored online such as the oft cited Wax Web by David Blair. Computer games and some DVDs offer an increasing range of multi-path video productions. In ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’ however, I engaged with online networks of video artists, to see how the parameters of the network might shape the writing and production of a single, linear work.

The ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’ project participants were sourced through a range of video related mailing lists where I publicised my website about the video production. The website asks for a short clip to be shot on a rooftop, offering some guidelines for continuity but leaving much room for creative interpretation. As a central theme and plot device, I chose the telephone which worked well, becoming a narrative bridge for the interweaving of scenes shot by Australian, English, Chinese, Colombian, and Swiss video makers. Each clip was to start by answering and end  by dialling a mobile phone, which would allow for later joining of scenes. As the project progressed clarification or feedback was given within email dialogue, and shooting plans in various countries were modified to better link to existing footage.

Future projects could include wider collaboration during the initial stages, drafting ideas together based on the shared knowledge of available resources, locations, actors, skills and time. This approach to co-ownership of the project and a larger timeframe, could lead to more radically different sets of work being produced, and perhaps several versions of a video bing made by different directors who wanted to focus on certain footage, themes, production processes or styles.

Extending Narrative Video
Since the release of the first video camera/recorder, Portapak, in 1965 by Sony, the medium of video has been celebrated by artists eager to gain access to a portable tool for exploring the moving image. Theorists have arguably had a much more difficult time, as attempts to define video are tied to understanding it’s relationship with television, cinema and now new media technologies. Video can also encompass such a broad range of aesthetics and narrative environments, given the ways it may be sourced, created, manipulated, transferred or incorporated within other media, distributed, screened or installed. I am primarily interested in what can be done with affordable video technologies, and believe video’s narrative and aesthetic ranges can be dramatically extended by creative the use of online networks, more available video hardware, and the software based real-time video manipulation tools which have proliferated in the last 3 years.

Given the widespread capacity for video production and existence of file formats and protocols, the video scripting and production processes can benefit immensely at each stage, from decentralisation or collaboration. This can happen through the communication processes of the production. Many audio programs such as DASE allow real-time musical collaboration online, but this process is hampered for video by it’s larger file sizes.

‘VJ’ software usually used for live mixing of video at electronic music events, opens a huge range of processes for image abstraction, real-time based editing, sequencing and complex rhythmic motion splicing and randomisation. Advanced programs such as NATO or VDMX which is built using NATO, allow additional complex programmable functions which allow artists to develop code which can alter video in very specific ways, or automate the linking of video parameters such as contrast directly to other parameters such as particular sound frequencies. Large sample banks of videoclips are accessible via instantaneous key presses, allowing the live triggering of clips and offering possibilities for shooting in new ways with this live editing in mind. ‘VJs’ are building new visual narrative forms with their live manipulation of video, and in some cases extending these techniques to other video projects.

During the production of ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’ I employed some of these processes, usually as a second layer, or as a way of trialling different scenes of rhythms quickly. Using these processes often leads to abstraction of sound and/ or vision. Challenging the primacy of dialogue within narrative doesn’t have to diminish narrative however, and films such as Lucky People Center show that audio-visual playfulness can heighten the impact of underlying themes. As a generation has grown up with software interfaces, computer game narratives and understanding text, audio and video as programable data ( Manovich 2001: 45), we can expect an interesting ecology of audio-visual hybrid narratives to continue emerging.

Data Vs. Flow
The outcomes of ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’ are greater than the single clip produced. Stronger links within the network have been forged with some of the artists, and other plans have already been seeded, building on the production of this short film. As we try to refine and define ‘the space of flows’, a strong participatory culture will ensure that issues of equity are kept to the forefront of future societal development. By producing a collaborative 5 minute no-budget International rooftop video, and exploring some of the capacities of online networks to co-create ‘Sky Noise Polaroids’, I hope to have demonstrated in some small way where some of the possibilities of communications technology lie.

Bibliography
Castells, Manuel – The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1996.

Lovejoy, Margot – Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media, Prentice Hall, 1997.

Manovich, Lev – Language of New Media, MIT Press, 2001.

Plant, Sadie – Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture, Fourth Estate, 1997.

Wilson, Stephen – Noise on the Line: Emerging Issues in Telecommunications Based Art, Leonardo Journal Vol 24:no.2, MIT Press, 1991.

Websites:

Sky Noise Polaroids  7 Jun 2002.
https://www.skynoise.net/2008/08/13/sky-noise-polaroids

AudioVisualizers web site 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.audiovisualizers.com

Cold Cut 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.ninjatune.net/coldcut

DASE music collaboration software 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.soundbyte.org

Dialtones (A Telesymphony) 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.flong.com/telesymphony

Guerrilla News Network: EBN – The Lost Tapes 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/ebn/

NATO Video Software 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.eusocial.com/nato.0+55+3d/242.0000.html

Stephen Wilson, Professor, Art Dept, San Francisco State University. 7 Jun 2002.
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/

The Eyecandy Videomixing Mailing List 7 Jun 2002.

The Surveillance Camera Players 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

VDMX Video Software 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.vidvox.net

VJamm website: “History”. VJamm Info. 7 Jun 2002.
http://www.ninjatune.net/coldcut/vjamm/index.html

Wax Web by David Blair  7 Jun 2002.
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/wax

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