Assessment

Title: Utopia Identity (temporal title)

Aims

The subject that I intend to conduct research and base a project on surrounds the idea of multiplicity, being that any person can project her/his own image in various states. The very relation with the objectives like that of artists Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura when they present their self in various photographs of self portraiture but never being the same, always they are simulating, substituting, parodying but mainly performing. With no great devices I want to be able to demonstrate that anybody have the capacity to project a multiplicity of images of her/his self. This formula of using digital plane corresponds to devices being used to present/display our identity by forums, chats, and instantaneous messages and to make an exploration of which mean these changes in our society and as it artists practices adapts to the actual society.





Objective

 Create a website as an on-line poll and documentation site.
 The simulation of the photo booth will have a similar look of the standard photo booth, need to be stimulating to catch the eye of the participant, but it must have ease of use to achieve maximum results
 The website when developed although very technical must provide straightforward instructions to make the online user comfortable because the patience of the online participant it’s very limited.
 To be very specific about the privacy of the user showing always that the photo once generated will not be included anywhere without her/his consent.



Rationale

Deconstruction / Interactivity

The important subject within this work for me is to create an interactive booth in a gallery, in which the visitors upon arrival change from just a viewer to become an active user. From my point of view it’s that the piece will generate a comprehensive documentation about the gender and performance. The previous relation with the object (in this case photo booth), that we conceive the object (photo booth) like an element that this ready in a non-place. Thus is not only characterized by a loss of identity, it institutes in the middle of the super complexity shelters regulated to the sine of which all those that they use are put still on of equality point.



One of the key points of the piece is the new meaning that photo booth results in. This object has previously noticeable and assimilated with a standard operation. But in a regular photo booth you do not listen to commentaries about how a woman or a man must pose according to her/his sex. These audio recordings come from the internet (public space) but inside of the photo booth the user is in a private space, this will then produce a confronting of both spaces.
What I am trying to discover is whether our single identity need to be only associated to our facial characteristics? I believe there are many corporal gestures that can define our identity, and for that reason the photography obtained has a frame greater than the standard photos identity because this Photo booth should catch ¾ of the body of the represented subject.


Portable cyborg

As William J Mitchell comment about the portability, the scaling up of the networks and the scaling down of the apparatus for transmission reception, constantly reduce the scale or the cell phones, mp3, or DVD player and in some occasion mixing in one only apparatus all this actions, something like happens with our body, or with our representation. We are included in date bases apart like a number in occasion like id photography. My project could follow the same line but with the object that the user can modify normal rules that they can find with the need to include a picture for an id form or ID card.


About the perform gender


Foucault spoke about the bio-politic as a result of the control society .The science discourse affirm while long time that the sex and gender have a natural relation. Thanks to some feminist authors like Monique Wittig or Judith Butler this theories were re-thinking and discussing like nonreal basement, because femininity or masculinity has a natural lack of this. The texts of Judith Butler, and other academics on queer theory emphasize the application of those technologies (the existence of that previous context of authority) in conceived statements as verifications acts of the speech. From this perspective, the sort statements (is a girl or boy) apparently describe a reality, but in fact (it is worth, in this case, the redundancy) they are performed acts that impose and reproduce a social convention, a political truth. All this leads to the redefinition of the notion of sort in terms of performance postulated by Judith Butler, trying to be unmarked of the primarily aesthetic connotation that has acquired the term performance. According to the American author, the sort identity would not be something substantial, but the performance effect of an invocation of a series of femininity conventions and masculinity. "An invocation, that it needs to repeat itself constantly to become normative, reason why the subversion of the performance effect can be operated an investment and be generated". Thus, with the appropriation of an originally offensive term like queer, a performance investment takes of the discursive order of the heterosexual law.

The Nineties represented an appearance of critical speeches on the construction of the sort, the sexuality and the race. Donna Haraway, doing use of the notion Foucault theory about the one of bio-power redefines the cinematographic, artistic and scientific representation in terms of technologies of the sort. Haraway uses the metaphor of cyborg (name given in 1960 by Mandred Clynes to a rat from laboratory to that a system of cybernetic control had been implanted him) to indicate that our bodies and our identities, of sort, race and sexual, is products of complex bio-politic technologies. The postmodern creatures we are, techno-alive cultural gender systems. The transition of the postfordism indicates the passage of an sex-organic industrial society to an information system of prosthetic and polymorph. Haraway denominates "computer science of the domination" (paradoxical of the society domination) of the actual situation of the sexual and cultural minorities front to the increasing globalization of the production systems and reproduction of the gender, sex and the race.





Outcomes

 Encourage the audience to participate in the project because without the public this project couldn’t be completed

 Practical skills in computer programming about make a date base or whatever other application that the website need

 Practical skills in management the costing of the photo booth

 A knowledge of technical and cultural background about construct a simulation of a photo booth

 Still doing a research about the cyborg and the immaterial identity





Media
Materials to construct the simulation of the photo booth and Hardware:
Materials to construct the photo booth like a web cam, basic computer to sent the images in to the net .To work about the website a current Pc or Mac.
Software
Flash 2004 MX, Dreamweaver Mx , FreeHand Mx and Photoshop.





Methodologies

My project I hope to present as a net.art piece that are expanding like an installation and a happening. The proposal has aspects related with the identity; to change the context and deconstruct the object linked with the interactive perform of the audience.


The idea is to present the piece as a happening proposing for the date of inauguration to the audience that bring any element or accessory to perform their identity in the same way as Cindy Sherman or Yasuma Morimura. The piece therefore consist in two parts, the first will be a website where the Internet user can access to the poll, how should a man or woman pose when they are trying to project there own sex? Where the users leave their answer as a verbal document that gathered and documented in digital audio file. The second element should be the simulation of a photo booth where inside of the cabin the user should have a background sound with recordings from the on-line poll, as "instructions" while this photo is being taken. Finally the process the user may choose if his/her wishes to enter the virtual community of the website or not, this is to protect the privacy of the user.

The user in the installation apart from participating in being photographed can also have access to see in the computer the website, therefore he/she would see their image being entered in the data base and have access to observe the rest of photographs There will also be an option for the user to send his/her image to. his/her own e-mail account or to any other person. When completed will make him/her a part of the piece.


Research

I’m hope to learn how to construct a database for a website, because the project will be used like a documentation site about examples to represent the gender. I need to learn how construct a system that functions like a basic photo booth with an option when the user want to be shoot it



Risk assessment


At this time I can’t predict big risks, maybe only the manipulation area of some materials of the computer like the mouse or the keyboard when the audience being using could be a problem if they don’t a correctly follow the instructions.


Timetable

December

Construction of the preview website while I’m continue learning programming skills and research about the identity in Internet.


January

Finish to learn how to construct a date base. Start to do a research about how contract a photo booth


February

Website finishes and gets a domain and host to the web. Prototype the photo booth.

March

Present a prototype of the photo booth.

April – June

Improve the visual aspect of the instillation and conclusion about the project.





Bibliography



Augé, Marc., 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to Anthropology of Super modernity. London & New York: Verso Books.

MITCHELL,William J., 2003. Me ++ The cyborg self and the networked city. Cambridge, Massacusetts. Mitt Press, 2003


Donna J. Haraway .,1991"Manifiesto para cyborgs: ciencia, tecnología y feminismo socialista a finales del siglo XX", en Ciencia, cyborgs y mujeres. La reinvención de la naturaleza , Cátedra, Madrid

Butler , Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge

Foucault, M., 1970. The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Tavistock Publications.





example of the web: "http://www.animalconcierge.co.uk/madig/poll.html"



see the animation in flash : http://www.animalconcierge.co.uk/madig/presentp.swf