Conceived as an hommage to the seminal telepresence installations from the founders of the Electronic Café in Los Angeles: Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, the Telepräsenz Lounge also strives to create a space without geographical boundaries.
Multiple lounges are designed and arranged in various cities. As you sit in the lounge your image is captured and shared with the other lounges, displayed within the frame of the most prominent furniture in any room: a digital television.
Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook all serve to promote and deify ‘Selfie-Culture.’ With the Telepresence Lounge line_code brings the Selfie into physical space, creating a point-to-point (neé peer to peer) network of Selfie machines feeding the insta gratification dopamine kick which the social networks of today profit from.
“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. -literally changes your relationship with society, with each other.”
Sean Parker, the onetime founding president of Facebook and co-founder of Napster
Line_code explores the social-validation feedback loop in a much different environment. On one hand placing the feedback loop in a public space forces the participant to become conscious of their position inside of the real society of physical people and breaks down the false sense of privacy one has when snapping a selfie in front of one’s own bedroom mirror. On the other hand the Selfies generated in the Telepräsenz Lounge are shared only on a (very) private network of computers (usually two).
As you sit in a lounge your image is discretely captured and shared with other lounges on the network, displayed within the frame of a handcrafted modified TV. After 35” the image changes, a processed version of the image from another lounge, 35” later a processed image of yourself. Etcetera ad infinitum. A net based work inspired by Charles Rice’s The Emergence of the Interior, this work emphasizes the current trend of ubiquitous connectivity in social interaction.
Social Synthesis is the technique line_code leverages in their interactive works. Emphasizing both seen and unseen social circles, Telepresence Lounge embodies not only the social connectivity between the lounges, more importantly the dynamic within each lounge itself. Artistic interior planning integrates design and technology. The playfulness of the group selfie and the awareness of being observed and preserved as digital art creates a group experience transcending everyday life.
As part of Night of the Museums Hegau-Schaffhausen, line_code (akaW3rkH0f media arts) presents their Telepresence Lounge.
Warning! Your presence will be teleported!
A normally harmless seating area has been transformed into an interactive telepresence station by means of modern technology!
20. September 2014 6 pm – 2 am
W3rkH0f 9Kirch, Klettgauerplatz 1, 8213 Neunkirch und Galerie tabouret, Hintersteig 3, hinter dem Bahnhof Schaffhausen
Interaktives Telepräsenz Ping-Pong als vernetzte Kommunikation zwischen zwei Stationen einer Museumsnacht.
Interagieren sie aus der Lounge in der Galerie tabouret mit dem W3rkH0f 9Kirch, Klettgauerplatz 1, Neunkirch – oder umgekehrt!
Interactive telepresence ping-pong as networked communications between two stations of a museums night.Interact from the lounge in the gallery tabouret Schaffhausen with the W3rkH0f 9Kirch – or in reverse!
Exhibition – Kunsthaus Zürich – W3rkH0f 9Kirch
29. + 30. November 2014, Design+Design
An interactive experiment, permitted between the designer couch of Hans Bellmann, 1946,- placed in the great hall of the Kunsthaus Zurich-, and a red velvet Sofa from the 1920’s,- placed in the unusual setting of a metal workshop from the same era, in the town of Neunkirch, Schaffhausen.
Ein interaktives Experiment, zugelassen zwischen dem designer Lounge Sofa von Hans Bellmann, 1946, – platziert im grossen Vortragssaal im Kunsthaus Zürich und einem Samtsofa aus ca 1920 in einer zweckverfremdeten Metallwerkstatt aus etwa der selben Zeit, in Neunkirch, Kanton Schaffhausen.
Location A: Kunsthaus ZürichLocation B: W3rkH0f 9Kirch, Canton Schaffhausen
