TELEMATICS: Virtual Encounter

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Telepresence or Telematics could be defined as the combination of physical and virtual space at an specific site using telecommunication tecnologies, such as broadcast, satellite and videophone. The goal is to achieve the sensation of presence at distance. For many years artists have been experimenting with these technologies with the goal of transforming the perception of the space, specially the physical space they inhabit.
Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, among others, are pionners of these telematics explorations.

  
     
    Telecommunications artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz like to think of themselves as "instigators," and they instigated themselves up a storm during the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. They set up their Electronic Cafe project with money from the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art at five ethnic restaurants in Los Angeles, with the idea of reflecting the cultural diversity of both the city and the Olympic Games contained therein. People at the five restaurants, as well as at the museum, could -- and did --exchange drawings, photos, poems, and messages to cafegoers at other locations, via the video/computer/robot equipment setups.  
         
    HOLE-IN-SPACE was a Public Communication Sculpture. On a November evening in 1980 the unsuspecting public walking past the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, and "The Broadway" department store located in the open air Shopping Center in Century City (LA), had a surprising counter with each other. Suddenly head-to-toe, life-sized, television images of the people on the opposite coast appeared. They could now see, hear, and speak with each other as if encountering each other on the same sidewalk. No signs, sponsor logos, or credits were posted -- no explanation at all was offered. No self-view video monitors to distract from the phenomena of this life-size encounter. Self-view video monitors would have degraded the situation into a self-conscience videoconference.   
         
    SATELLITE ARTS PROJECT '77, "A Space With No Geographical Boundaries". Objective: To demonstrate (for the first time), that several performing artists, all of whom would be separated by oceans and geography, could appear and perform together in the same live image (The image as place). Everyone would see themselves all together, standing next to each other, able to talk with each other, and alas, perform together -- "A performance space with no geographic boundaries".  
         
 


"MIDI-MAC MUSIC AND DANCE." Pioneering computer musician Mark Coniglio and Dancer Dawn Stoppiello, a member of the Bella Lewitsky dance troupe team up to create, "Tactile Diaries," an interactive vidphone dance performance with partners in New York City. Wearing a small telemetry device Dawn's movements controlled the music, lighting, and the transmission of her image.