Work in collaboration with Spanish artist Solimán López for his performance in the opening act of MADATAC 04. (December 2012)
Understanding #followus
Excerpt from the artist's site:
"According to the famous theory “Six Degrees of Separation” of Frigyes Karinthy, we are separated from any other person in the world from 6 degrees..
This theory has become more famous, has been established in the “gossip” common and we all speak. This public establishment, online social networks have had much to do.
From a historical perspective and epistemological, social networks have been studied since the late eighteenth century.
Not forgetting of course that humanity is itself a social network, formerly called clan or group.
Thinking from the sole proprietorship to the global, now the macro and micro-groups are interconnected, labeled and grouped sectorally by tastes, actions, comments or just preferencies.
Social networking has come to revolutionize the way we communicate and share our mainly contains stuff outside.
But like every great invention in the history of mankind, has certain issues intrinsic antagonistic to the concept of the social.
Privacy, appropriation, crowd control, social alienation, ridicule or denunciation are elements that intertwine in our social networks.
That awareness and evidence of what we are social beings, causing a feeling of belonging and social responsibility record.
Professionally and personally we are committed to use a channel that defines us as humans, but contains strong behind control tools, and consumer persuasion.
The choice is simple and clear, you can feel persuaded to participate in the network, or stay on the sidelines.
Both choices have their pros and cons, but certainly are important decisions today. It means to be in the network or live outside it.
Not about modernity and tradition, it is virtual or physical nature of global or individual, to share or be shared.
In ancient times, the current story is told through great relief friezes where myths and heroes are through a gap in the story, complicated and difficult positions. Friezes of the classical world that spoke of wishes, stories and eloquence. Of gains and losses and values that society should see and admire."
"According to the famous theory “Six Degrees of Separation” of Frigyes Karinthy, we are separated from any other person in the world from 6 degrees..
This theory has become more famous, has been established in the “gossip” common and we all speak. This public establishment, online social networks have had much to do.
From a historical perspective and epistemological, social networks have been studied since the late eighteenth century.
Not forgetting of course that humanity is itself a social network, formerly called clan or group.
Thinking from the sole proprietorship to the global, now the macro and micro-groups are interconnected, labeled and grouped sectorally by tastes, actions, comments or just preferencies.
Social networking has come to revolutionize the way we communicate and share our mainly contains stuff outside.
But like every great invention in the history of mankind, has certain issues intrinsic antagonistic to the concept of the social.
Privacy, appropriation, crowd control, social alienation, ridicule or denunciation are elements that intertwine in our social networks.
That awareness and evidence of what we are social beings, causing a feeling of belonging and social responsibility record.
Professionally and personally we are committed to use a channel that defines us as humans, but contains strong behind control tools, and consumer persuasion.
The choice is simple and clear, you can feel persuaded to participate in the network, or stay on the sidelines.
Both choices have their pros and cons, but certainly are important decisions today. It means to be in the network or live outside it.
Not about modernity and tradition, it is virtual or physical nature of global or individual, to share or be shared.
In ancient times, the current story is told through great relief friezes where myths and heroes are through a gap in the story, complicated and difficult positions. Friezes of the classical world that spoke of wishes, stories and eloquence. Of gains and losses and values that society should see and admire."
Idea
The performance involves the audience who can participate live via their twitter accounts, either from the auditorium or from home, in their hands is the ultimate development of the action. It is the audience who has the final decision of creating a hard battle of contents or let themselves go with the pre-established flow.
The performance consists in 3 rounds of "virtual fights" of 5 minures each in which the hashtag #followus interacts with other hashtags that have been chosen based in their theme and popularity.
Round 1:
#arte #desahucio #amor vs. #followus
(#art, #eviction, #love vs. #followus)
Round 1:
#arte #desahucio #amor vs. #followus
(#art, #eviction, #love vs. #followus)
Round 2:
#performance #naciones #huelga vs. #followus
(#performance, #nations, #strike vs. #followus)
#performance #naciones #huelga vs. #followus
(#performance, #nations, #strike vs. #followus)
Round 3:
#contemporaneo #casualidad #pope vs. #followus
(#contemporary, #chance, #pope vs. #followus)
#contemporaneo #casualidad #pope vs. #followus
(#contemporary, #chance, #pope vs. #followus)
#followus resolves visual conflicts while the other generate chaos and agression, the performer reacts physically to the agressions or treats generated by twitter. The image projected over the artist reflects the impact of the twitter interactions on his body and it's updated by the participants on real time.
Two screen projections at each side of the stage will display the tweet cloud generated for al the hashtags.
Two screen projections at each side of the stage will display the tweet cloud generated for al the hashtags.
Development
The installation uses a kinect camera tracking the artist's movements and projecting his own silhouette on himself augmented with the content generated from the crossfire of tweets. The sensor is used to constrain the contents to the performer's body, as a sort of projection mapper, avoiding the overflow of projected content over the room walls.
A Processing sketch using OpenKinect is used to display the content while another sketch grabs the tweets from Internet using twitter's API, projects them on the side screens and generates the visualization.
The visualizations are different for each round:
Round #1: The performer starts with a clean white silhouette with calmed hertabeat sound in the background, every negative tweet is displayed as a shot in the performer's body, the color of the expansive wave is different for each type of negative hashtag. Each shot alters the health of the performer and his heart beat which turns into a faster more intense red, a positive #followus tweet will relax the performer's body.
Round #2: The body of the performer is made of particles that decitemate by each negative tweet, positive tweets regenerate some of the particles. Without a cure the performer's body will eventually vanish in the air.
Round #3: Each negative tweet makes the performer's body more and more hollow until just a thin countour is displayed and he eventually diappears, positive tweets will cover the gap making him fulfilled again.
Role
My role in this installation was co-ideation, coding and design of the interaction for the installation.
Impact
The hashtag #followus was twitted 145 times in the about 20 minutes that the action lasted.
As a side and unexpected effect, the use of the different kind of hashtags during the three rounds brought in very interesting battles among the audience in between those who tried to "kill" the artist and those who tried to "save" him.
