'For over three decades, in performance, photography, installations, artificial intelligence agents, artifacts, web presences and in movies, Lynn Hershman's work has dealt with what it is to live in a world of mediated, surveilled, documented, translated, manipulated, transformed identities, corporealities, and presences. Ninety boxes of the remains of much of this work now lie in an archive in Stanford University - papers, photographs, tapes, movies, sound recordings. Their relationship, as documents, to Lynn's "body" of work is in question.
What is it to recollect? - in this world of mediated and multiple presences. And with the prospect of even greater (bio-info-technological) intervention in our sense of self? Will your clone know you? Will your downloaded memories convey the experience of what was?
Documenting the past, we propose, is to actively reshape and rework what remains (of the future).'
Lynn Hershman and colleagues at Stanford University have been working for over a year now at developing an online archive of Lynn Hershman's work in Second Life.
Some of the Stanford team at work in Second Life
The extensive documentation of this project, whose opening statement is pasted at the top of this page, is available at [link]
Beneath are some reflections from the other side of the Atlantic developed by
Gabriella Giannachi as a work in progress.
NEWare - the island where Life to the Second Power will take place
On 22 May 2006 an online meeting took place between some members of the Stanford team and Lynn Hershman Leeson. The full documentation is at [link]
The participants are:
Lynn Hershman - ssofft Ware
Henry Lowood - Liebenwalde Ware
Michael Shanks - Archaeolog Ware
Jeff Aldrich - Motorato Ware
Matteo Bittanti - manybits Dannunzio
Henrik Bennetsen - Lys Ware
I am fascinated by the minutes of this meeting:
- everybody is using their double, second life name but I don't feel that I am in front of characters or personae - I try to guess who said what and get it right most times, even without knowing the majority of the team. I wonder though how (whether) discussing work in second life displaces its participants.
- after reading the first few exchanges between the participants to this meeting, their voices start to merge, and finally become one. This is due to the rhythm of the conversation but also, I suspect, because, with the exception of Matteo, 'manybits Dannunzio', everybody has the same surname, 'Ware'. Somehow this team has become one family, one presence. I recall Tom Postmes's work in relation to online communities and remember he postulates that linguistically online communities tend to merge.
As NEWare is beginning to take shape and the traces of Lynn Hershman's archive, itself formed of traces of a lifelong committment to an exploration of identity and presence (though often in its absence), are increasingly recognisable, I wonder:
How will NEWare's specific spatial configuration effect the presence of Lynn Hershman's work within it?
What will be the spatial (and thus dramaturgical) relationship between the different works on the island?
How do discourses that read installations as events translate within this context (i.e., in Second Life)?
The installation currently has a predominant patina of yellow - the colour of aged paper. I remember writing about Nefertiti and Day of the Figurines [link] in relation to the role of aging in beauty. I personally have always found archives interesting, or 'beautiful', because of the signs of their age. So I wonder how does this aging translate in Second Life?
How do we create an archive from within the archive? Where is the archivist located?
At a personal level, I have never met Lynn Hershman, though I have written about her work for a few years now and emailed on a number of occasions. I realise, strangely, that I am as excited about meeting her in Second Life as I would be if we were to encounter in San Francisco.
On 18 September 2006, Jeff Aldrich posts this image and text
'Preparatory to building the Dante Hotel and environs, some terraforming has taken place on the island...'
There is something very surreal about this image. It reminds me of my first visit to Second Life when I felt the site had some peculiar uncanny qualities. Despite the fact that I was in the presence of a multitude of players, possibly within one of the largest player communities in the world, there is something of a ghostly athmosphere in Second Life that I have not experienced in CAVE - perhaps this is common to online massively multiplayer games... or perhaps this is what happens to me in the presence of my avatar.
On 28 September 2006 Jeff Aldrich posts the following images which begin to offer a sense of the spaces that are being constructed
The corridors for the Dante Hotel
A gallery of images including a video screening shot at the original installation.
This picture has the heading 'In "Room 47", wrapping up the meeting.'
I am fascinated by the textures that begin to emerge from these images. I wonder also how my avatar can escape the cartoon quality of Second Life. I need to personalise my avatar but have no time... not looking after 'my'- 'self'?
9 November 2006. Lynn Hershman sends an email about her forthcoming event in Second Life
'Regenerative Presence, Remixing the Archives of Lynn Hershman Leeson'
A HASTAC event: 11/30/2006.
Note: Attendance at this event in Second Life is restricted to invited avatars. The event will be documented as it progresses and presented in its entirety as streaming video. It will be made available via the Life to the Second Power project, both in Second Life and in the project wiki, upon its conclusion.
Shorty afterwards, Henry Lowood sends the following notification
'At 12:00pm PST (noon) on November 30th, 2006, the Stanford Humanities Lab in collaboration with artist Lynn Hershman will present "Regenerative Presence: Remixing the Archives of Lynn Hershman Leeson." This will be a presentation of work from the ongoing Life to the Second Power (L2) research project
<http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/LynnHershman/261>.
This event is taking place under the umbrella of the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC -- [link]) as part of its InFormation year, and in conjunction with other events held in December 2006 throughout the Bay Area. For more information, see [link].
We are writing to invite you to this special event, which will take place in its entirety inside the "virtual" world called Second Life.
The L2 Project seeks to regenerate and re-imagine Hershman's work inside the 3D online world Second Life; it will re-animate Hershman's existing archive, now housed in the Special Collections Library at Stanford University. Converting the archive into a digital format of hybrid genre will allow users of the content to dynamically revisit
the past while simultaneously expanding the audience for this material.
Hershman will give a tour of L2's work in Second Life. Her voice will be streamed live via the web. The presentation can be experienced from multiple viewpoints. The event will be documented as it happens and later made available online.'
27 November 2007
I start to get my avatar ready for 30 November and cannot resist visiting the site. I am particularly interested in the relationship between sight and site here, and wonder how the space is being (re-)configured through traces. I find that I move around as if I was in a real gallery space, observing art (rather than its simulation). I also find an unexpected pleasure in attempting to establish the differeneces between the so called originals (of which I only saw a few) and the simulations. This, for me, is beginning to be a crucial aspect of this project in Second Life - the traces of Lynn's works, which in themselves are so much based on the interplay of presence/absence, are here simulated - so, I wonder, what is a simulated trace? How does one simulate a trace?
My avatar admiring Lynn's work.
Later that day I return to Second Life to find Henry Lowood (Liebenwalde Ware), Jeff Aldrich (Motorato Ware) and Henrik Bennetsen (Lys Ware) at work. I know from Jeff and Lynn that I must stay in character but find it hard within this context. I have experience of participating to games in character, but not of working in character. This reminds me of the minutes of a meeting posted earlier on this page, and makes me wonder as to whether the team, when meeting in Second Life, are effectively in character and as to how this will affect, for instance, the press conference on November 30.
Motorato Ware offers me an amazing tour and patiently helps me in operating the artworks. Lys Ware seems busy elsewhere and Liebenwalde Ware appears quiet. I realise that I really am in the presence of the Stanford team, for the first time since starting this project, and the fact that this has been possible through Second Life, via our doubles, is in itself quite an extraordinary event.
30 November 2006
Yesterday at 8pm UK time Lynn Hershman started her press conference in Second Life. I had been hovering in the proximity of the stage with Stefanie Kuhn, our Presence Project research graduate, who, like me, is very new to Second Life. We had trouble at adjusting our appearance and at some stage we looked identical - so, to create some distance, I decided to wear a jacket and Stefanie, interestingly ended up wearing more and more layers of clothes. Strangely, in the end, we still looked identical, yet somehow uncannily different.
While we chatted away, some familiar faces appeared: Liebenwalde Ware (who seemed to be in a perpetual dancing mood), Motorato Ware (very busy all the time), Lys Ware (just as busy) and a very smart Archaeolog Ware who, like a perfect host, stood by Gene Ware during the conference. Gene, of course, was the special guest that everyone had been waiting for. She looked fantastic, though I was initially surprised at her name since I had expected her to appear as Ssofft Ware. There were also some avatars I had not met before, like bubbling JOE Languish, who looked amazing and Vettore Veloce who appeared to be very futuristic and was half naked. As the press conference started, I was asked to sit down but failed miserably. Somehow I felt embarrassed and moved to the side of the stage with Nice Losangeles.
The screening illustrated the overall project with great accuracy, and despite a certain nervousness from the Stanford team, there were no technical hicups at the presentation and so everybody was able to hear and see everything really well. A number of interesting points emerged that answered questions raised previously in this blog.
Crucially, Gene Ware explained how the floor of the building is designed on top of the actual floorplan of the Dante Hotel which had been obtained from the city hall. There is something about the precision of this act of tracing, the real through the virtual, which is important to me not only in terms of presence research but also in terms of an understanding of the complex processes of remediation characteristic of the aesthetic of new media. Because of the way the floor plan is rendered and juxtaposed to the rest of the site, we do have a feeling of layering, of history, or even archaeo-logy, which draws, visually, from montage but also museology (history as site). Because of the navigability of the Second Life space, we also have a sense of immersion, of 'being present inside' something. It is in the displacement of one space through the other (all taking place at the level of surface) that NEWare re-constitutes itself - as in Gene Ware's words, we are 'an archive of the archive's archive'.
After the end of the screening, we follow Gene Ware for a tour of the island. Gene continues to describe the project, and I realise just how many layers there are in this 'flat world'. I also have to keep reminding myself that we are, of course, in a very public context, experiencing our second life, part of a massively multiplayer game that is possibly the most popular performance site at this point in time.
Through a tracking system, we are told, 'visitors will be able to leave a trail to show that they were there'. Moreover, sculptures are continuously being created just 'by being in the space'. Our presence as visitors does therefore not only constitute a record or trace in this space but actually creates the space from within. Second Life is also, as Michael Shanks reminds me in an email, prosthetic. In this sense it is not so much a second as an augmented life. Once again, I wonder how to document this site which in itself is a document, or archive, of an artist who so assiduously and originally has time and again worked with traces (both her own and those of viewers) and doubles (of identity but also narrative). I wonder now if I will interview her, who will I meet - Gene Ware? Ssofft Ware? Or Lynn? Or Roberta? I have much to learn here....
Subsequently to our tour through the island, we all followed Gene Ware inside the Dante, upstairs, through a narrow corridor, and then all the way to the famous room 47. There is something uncanny about having an artist show you through the digital archive of their own work (artwork, incidentally, realised over a period of over 30 years). When we arrived at room 47, about which I have, over the last few years, thought so much, I suddenly realised that I was 'actually' moved. I feel now, that I am writing about this, that I need to think this through further and wonder how Lynn felt (or Gene, or Ssofft Ware?) at this extraordinary moment when the real and the virtual collided in room 47 once again.
As we admire the room, Gene Ware points out that 'The Dante was all about how we impact the spaces we traverse'. I need to read more about game aesthetics to understand the function of this movement of traversing in relation to presence research. As for closure, I have to confess that the more I think about what happened yesterday the more I surprise myself - for instance, Gene Ware (beneath in her beautiful red suit) actually had, at least for me, aura. So where, I now wonder, did that come from?
3 December 2006
Ouida Ware, who is at Duke's, I think, remarks about her own clumsy movements: 'I got caught in the walls a few times, fell to earth rather too rapidly. However, I got to jump through time portals and to visit a hotel whose strange combination of presence and absence left me unstable, seeking ways to understand what is real, Real, and REAL! (...) Focusing in on the photos in the gallery makes me long for the Real, superpixelated eyeball version. The intentionality of looking includes gesture. In some ways this is a more visceral experience than wandering a RL gallery would be.' [link]
I'm really interested in this. I also felt clumsy. I seem to remember that I felt the same in Blast Theory's Day of the Figurines, especially in the presence of Hassan, and a few other players who were of course, like the majority of the poeple at Lynn's event, 'experienced' second lifers. I recognise what this blogger says when she talks about feeling unbalanced and Lynn, of course, in an interview to Wirxli FlimFlam's (Jeremy Owen Turner) [link] points out that 'it's all about location, dislocation and relocation'. I'm fascinated by the fact that Ouida Ware talks about the fact that her istability originates from the interplay of presence and absence and am really keen to hear from anyone else who may have had this experience. I'm also interested in the fact that she refers to the fact that the intentionality of looking includes gesture and remember that Archaeolog Ware pointed out to me in an email shorly after the event that Second Life was for him prosthetic. Gesture is of course a consequence of the performativity of HCI.
I also had a really fascinating email from Moto - I hope he doesn't mind if I just reproduce some of it here.
Moto says: 'First is the floor plan drawing, the story of which is actually better than you state. As it happens, City Hall could not offer any help in our quest for documentation of the original Dante's layout. Nor, as it turned out, did they have the requisite planning documents for the current Europa. I'm certain that eventually these drawings would have surfaced somewhere, but after several fruitless weeks, Henrik took matters into his own hands. The family who manages the Europa had to have a room map to satisfy their own licensing requirements. Having as little luck as we with the constituted authorities, they simply drew their own. The drawings in the yellowed and blurry state you saw them in large scale on the ground at NEWare are simply digital photos of the paper versions mounted on the wall behind the reception desk.
I love this detail and must look at the drawings again to see what this knowledge reveals to me. This site already exists for me in the tension between the photographic documents I have seen, and the writings I have read (I have no direct memory of the piece as I have never seen the 'original' installation), and now, of course, it is beginning to exist also in relation to this anecdotal evidence as another type of foto or document. In Lynn's work, of course, traces and identities return, all the time, and it is the pleasure (or disturbance) of their difference that often generates the aesthetic of the work
Moto also revealed that Gene Ware's aura was in fact the result of a sophsticated lighting system.
The second bit of lore regards "aura". You mentioned that Gene Ware seemed to have one, and in fact she did. This is a real bubble-bursting revelation, I suppose, but pedantry will out. The serene glow bathing Gene was generated by a personal lighting system that is part and parcel of the "skin" used by that avatar. It's very effective in enhancing the complexion of that particular skin, as you saw. The kit consists of three balls of light, made invisible, sized a bit larger than the av's head. One floats a meter or so forward and upward from the av, the second at about thigh height and forward, and the third hovers behind at intermediate altitude.
This again makes me think, as in the case of Day of Figurines, about the role of theatricality in these games not only at the level of character or plot (see Laurel for this) but in terms of the very quality of the encounter - presence, aura, liveness...
