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TELEPRESENCE ART

Eduardo Kac

This essay discusses an art based on the integration of telecommunications, robotics, new kinds of human-machine interface, and computers. This “telepresence art” can be understood within the wider framework of electronic interactive art. At its best, interactive art implies less stress on form (composition) and more emphasis on behavior (choice, action), negotiation of meanings, and the foregrounding of the public who, now transformed into “participants,” acquire a prominent and active role in shaping their own field of experiences. The role of the artist in interactive art is not to encode messages unidirectionally but to define the parameters of the open-ended context in which experiences will unfold.

It seems to me that some confusion has resulted from the almost indistinguishable use of the words cyberspace, virtual reality, and telepresence in recent electronic art theory and criticism. This essay focuses on telepresence as a new art medium, but first I wish to clarify the meanings of these three words. Second, I will try to suggest that telepresence is a new kind of communicative experience. Third, I will point out the primacy of real time over real space as it pertains to this new kind of communication event, in general, and to telepresence art, especifically. Fourth, I will comment on some cultural implications of telepresence beyond the narrow field of scientific simulation. Finally, I will conclude with a brief discussion of the telepresence installation “Ornitorrinco on the Moon,” created by myself and Ed Bennett especially for the international telecommunication arts festival “Blurred Boundaries” (Entgrenzte Grenzen II), that took place around the world and was coordinated by Kulturdata, in Graz, Austria, in 1993.

Throughout the essay I will use the word media in reference to all systems that allow transmission of information from one point to another (television, telephone, modems, etc.). I will use the phrase mass media more specifically in relation to systems that transmit information unidirectionally from one point to many points (television, radio, etc.).