Chapter 2 section 4 Art Agents: Cybernetic performance and art with robots

Domestic Tension occurs as performance art. It's antecedents are perhaps best exemplified by the works of such extreme works as those of Vito Acconci, Chris Burdon, whose performance, "Shoot!" strips down the mechanics of projectile themed performance to its brutal basics, and arguably Mathew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, which combines elements of platform style video games with machismo driven elements of digital Role Playing Games. When Barney's central character, played by a young and handsome Matthew Barney himself, climbs the interior of the Guggenheim museum in New York, and cavorts with nude women, in a surrealistic environment, I sense much of the same impulses that drive the Duke Nukem series of games, albeit with a much more developed theoretical rationale.

Domestic Tension has none of the glamour of the Cremaster Cycle, nor the short, sharp imperative of Chris Burdon's "Shoot". Burdon's work lasts for only about a minute. The performative element is only really from the time his friend aims at Burdon's arm, until about seven seconds later Burdon has ordered "shoot!" the friend fires and a bleeding Burdon walks unsteadily past the camera. The film is the only record of the performance, and the performance would have only been available to the small audience gathered there at that moment. This contrasts with the interactivity of Bilal's performance, and the ostensive elements- what sociologist Bruno Latour labels that which does not dissipate versus the performative- such as ongoing discussion as people review the youtube blogs that Bilal published during the performance, and the excerpts from chatroom blogs that he published in his memoir about the performance.

Perhaps the most salient point about Bilal's performance is the role of robot as a participant in the performance. The paintball gun was the crux of the performance. Without it, creating a sense of menace, the performance was emotionally void. Moreover, the specifics of the paintball gun versus a painting, were that its relationship with Bilal developed over time in a specific shared space, as opposed to the brevity of Burdon's "Shoot" or with Goya's works which were displaced substantially in time and space versus the events they addressed and the artist and audience they involved. After all, a painting could only be viewed in one space and were created several years after the conflicts they depicted. They could not affect an audience virtually in the same way that an internet performance can spill out from the space in which it occurs. Goya's painting, and Burdon's film of his performance, lack the obvious effect of agency deployed by a remote controlled, internet mediated paint ball gun.

My intention is not to evaluate different media, but to observe how a cybernetic paint ball gun might appear to have greater agency than a painting or a film. This appearance is suggested by Bilal saying that he felt lonely when the gun broke down during the performance. It is important to remember this performance was 31 days long. Burdon did not express similar emotions towards the rifle he was shot with. Even though we know that paintball guns are not imbued with intentionality, we still appear to be able to think about them as having a character. This suggests that although it is easier to imagine a moving, three dimensional object as having agency(a discussion I will elaborate in Chapter 4) would can ascribe a parallel agency to any art work. however, at this point, I want to simply consider some artworks that thematically resemble Domestic Tension i.e. The Eighth of May, 1808 and "Shoot!" but also contemporary artworks that utilise robotics and cybernetics as a means to expression.

More crude, and violent robots were the massive robots use by Mark pauline and other members of Survival Research Laboratories. These robots often used fire as well as battering attacks to create performances critiquing technological domination and the use of violence in governance(1). Chris Csikszentmihalyi produced his robot Hunter Hunter(1993) which was automated to load and fire a 9mm round towards a loud noise(2). Other Robot art works that suggest Domestic Tension include Epizoo created by Marcel.li Antunez Roca and Sergi Jorda. This performance consisted of a robot that deformed and manipulated the body of Antunez according to remote commends of the audience(3). Edaurdo Kac's robot Ornitorrinco has performed in several different events, exploring telepresence in multiple cities during one performance.(4)

The use of weapons, telepresence and robots have now several generations of deployment in contemporary art practice.

                           
(1)Kac, Eduardo "Towards a Chronology of Robotic Art" in Convergence 2001 7: 87
(2)Kac, Eduardo "Towards a Chronology of Robotic Art" in Convergence 2001 p.100
 
(3)Kac, Eduardo "Towards a Chronology of Robotic Art" in Convergence 2001 p.103
 (4)Kac, Eduardo "Towards a Chronology of Robotic Art" in Convergence 2001
 

Chapter 4 Section 4- Art Objects at the Boundary

The boundary object is in its original formulation an object that can act as a point of communication between two groups. In the previous section I argued, following from the work of Actor-Network theorists and the work of Alfred Gell, that art objects have agency. Here I will discuss how this agency is expressed when disparate groups gather and communicate through such an agent. I will also consider the physical and metaphorical sense of the boundary as a spatial term, which will lead to the next section's discussion of spatiality.

The origin of the concept of the boundary object arises in a 1989 paper by Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer where they discussed the interactions of amateur and professional zoologists at the Berkley Museum of Zoology during the early half of the 20th Century(1). Their work extends its analysis from the concept of interressement developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law. As Star and Griesemer describe interessement as that which entails different groups, for example scientists and non-scientists 'translating' their concerns so that these can be shared by other groups, thus retaining them as 'allies'(2).  In contrast to their characterization of Latour, Callon, and Law's work with it's emphasis on how one group "funnels" the interests of others to support it's particular concerns, Star and Griesemer allow for multiple negotiations between networks of interested groups(3). This negotiation was called translation, as in the meaning and message conveyed from one group in a network to another were shifted sufficiently to be understood and embraced by another group without betraying the original concerns expressed the group seeking to 'funnel' the exchanges in the network towards a goal or objective.

The role of the boundary objects in achieving those goals is to be "objects which both inhabit several
intersecting social worlds...and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them"(4). Star and Griesemer explicitly critique Latour et al's concept as failing to address the multiple interests at play in a museum setting- they point point out that

"There, several groups of actors -    amateurs, professionals, animals, bureaucrats and 'mercenaries'-    succeeded in crafting a coherent problem-solving enterprise, surviving multiple translations."(5)

The application of boundary object theory to contemporary art history becomes more apparent when we consider it was initially deployed to try "to understand the historical development of a particular type of institution:natural history research museums"(6). In this case the natural history museum they were examining originated as a research museum, unlike many others which Star and Griesemer describe as originating as a popular attraction that subsequently reflected a growing professionalization in the museology of natural history(7).
                                               
(1) Star, Susan Leigh & James R. Griesemer. "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39" in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1989), pp. 387-420 


 (2) ibid p. 389


 (3) ibid p. 390

(4) ibid p. 393

(5) ibid p. 392

(6) ibid p. 391


(7) ibid  p. 391


 Albertsen, Niels.& Bülent Diken "Artworks’ Networks Field, System or Mediators?" in Theory, Culture & Society 2004 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 21(3): 35–58 

Rodriguez, H. "Technology as an Artistic Medium" in 2006 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics October 8-11, 2006, Taipei, Taiwan 

Berner, Boel. "Working knowledge as performance: on the practical understanding of machines" in
Work Employment Society 2008 22: 319


 Vandenberghe, FrÈdÈric. "Reconstructing Humants: A Humanist Critique of Actant-Network Theory" in
Theory Culture Society 2002 19: 51