Locative Media & The City

Another artist that Redl’s work reminds me of is Camille Utterback- www.camilleutterback.com . Her installations invoke the participant to think about their embodiment in the space, interact with each other, and create social relations with other participants bodies. In her installation, Untitled 5, which is part of her External Measures series that she has been working on since 2001, Utterback exposes the line between the corporeal and conceptual, much like Redl. The Untitled 5 project is described as a living painting and kinetic sculpture. The audience has agency in the real time painting process via a video tracking device. When the participant moves in the space, drawing software outputs a changing wall image. The gray lines moving on the screen depict the real body’s presence in the space, and a red line traces the person’s movements. Then, small circular dots that look like painterly blobs are formed across the line. When other people enter the space, they can change the placement of these marks based on their movements. However, like a magnet, marks will try to move back towards their original form and the blobs will smear across the screen as this occurs. Intersections of painterly strokes from the marks’ movements record real time moments of bodily interaction with the screen. If the participant is static, then smaller marks will be created and begin to erase the older strokes on the screen. Through kinesthetic explorations, the participants can begin to uncover the process of how their bodily presence affects the images on screen. Further, Utterback says that the experience of this project is the “experience of embodiment itself.” Utterback also explains that she hopes her piece allows for a positive interaction and experience with computers. In order to achieve this, she emphasizes the space and embodiment. Also, her 1999 interactive installation, Text Rain explores the space between bodies and the screen. Falling virtual letters appear to react and move based on the human’s interaction. The experience is described as “like rain or snow, the text appears to fall on participants heads.” Phrases and words can be caught when the participant builds enough letters that rest on their outstretched arms or legs. The letters that fall are parts of a poem about bodies and language. Like ubiquitous computing, the interface is easy for participants to quickly understand how they interact and change it; therefore the technology does not get in the way of the experience. All that needs to be understood is how to move ones arms and bodies, and to observe how the environment reacts. Participants, often strangers, sometimes try to steal each other’s letters or connect visually through their reflections on the screen, creating a social relationship with each other.