prehysteries of new media: >> Paul Sermon, "Telematic Dreaming", 1992

<< preface

this blog is nina wenhart's collection of resources on the various histories of new media art. it consists mainly of non or very little edited material i found flaneuring on the net, sometimes with my own annotations and comments, sometimes it's also textparts i retyped from books that are out of print.

it is also meant to be an additional resource of information and recommended reading for my students of the prehystories of new media class that i teach at the school of the art institute of chicago in fall 2008.

the focus is on the time period from the beginning of the 20th century up to today.

2008-07-17

>> Paul Sermon, "Telematic Dreaming", 1992

http://www.hgb-leipzig.de/~sermon/dream/

Telematic Dreaming is an installation that exists within the ISDN digital telephone network. Two separate interfaces are located in separate locations, these interfaces in themselves are dynamic installations that function as customized video-conferencing systems. A double bed is located within both locations, one in a blacked out space and the other in an illuminated space. The bed in the light location has a camera situated directly above it, sending a live video image of the bed, and a person ("A") lying on it, to a video projector located above the other bed in the blacked out location. The live video image is projected down on to the bed with another person ("B") on it. A second camera, next to the video projector, sends a live video image of the projection of person "A" with person "B" back to a series of monitors that surround the bed and person "A" in the illuminated location. The telepresent image functions like a mirror that reflects one person within another persons reflection.

"Telematic Dreaming" deliberately plays with the ambiguous connotations of a bed as a telepresent projection surface. The psychological complexity of the object dissolves the geographical distance and technology involved in the complete ISDN installation. The ability to exist outside of the users own space and time is created by an alarmingly real sense of touch that is enhanced by the context of the bed and caused by an acute shift of senses in the telematic space. The users consciousness within the telepresent body is controlled by a voyeurism of its self. The cause and effect interactions of the body determine its own space and time, by extending this through the ISDN network, the body can travel at the speed of light and locate itself wherever it is interacting. In "Telematic Dreaming" the user exchanges their tactile senses and touch by replacing their hands with their eyes.

The celibacy of the machine brings about the celibacy of "Telematic Man". Exactly as he grants himself the spectacle of his brain and of his intelligence as he sits in front of the computer or word-processor, the "Telematic Man" gives himself the spectacle of his fantasies and of a virtual "jouissance" as he sits in front of his "minitel rose". He exorcises "jouissance" or intelligence in the interface with the machine. The Other, the sexual or cognitive interlocutor, is never really aimed at - crossing the screen evokes the crossing of the mirror. The screen itself is targeted as the point of interface. The machine (the interactive screen) transforms the process of communication, the relation from one to the other, into a process of commutation, ie. the process of reversibility from the same to the same. The secret of the interface is that the Other is within it virtually the Same - otherness being surreptitiously confiscated by the machine."

Jean Baudrillard "Xerox and Infinity" pages 5. 6. ISBN 0-33701-88-9 Touchepas. Originally published as Le Xerox et L´Infini, Paris 1987

for a recent study on audience experience with Paul Sermon's "Telematic Vision", see: http://creativetechnology.salford.ac.uk/paulsermon/vision/tv_a.html, Master Thesis and interview with Paul Sermon by Rolf Wolfensberger, 2009