React | Recombine | Reconsider : Project Statement

Whether you are with a friend, a colleague, a lover or a stranger, when you have a shared experience there is no possible way to confirm that your experience was the same as that of the people who you shared it with. We often convince ourselves that if two people saw the same thing they must have experienced the same thing. This is a lie, and it's a lie we tell ourselves on a daily basis in order to feel less lonely. Not only are our experiences uniquely our own, but any given experience will be different depending on who is present at the event and the conditions that the reign over it. Our interactive project React | Recombine | Reconsider creates a scenario where each user has a unique experience and that experience is conditional on whom, if anyone at all, accompanies them in this experience.

In order to create these individual experiences, each viewer is given an object with a unique characteristic (a wearable cord with an electrical plug hanging off the end). These objects serve as ID tags that are interfaced to one of three stations in the exhibition space. The stations are identical in appearance: child-sized mannequins with 3”x5” video screens embedded in the chest, and three electrical sockets implanted in the abdomen. When a user jacks into one of the stations, they view a visual poem unique to them. But when multiple people interface with the same station simultaneously, the personal experience becomes a shared experience and unexpected (though strangely familiar) results follow. When multiple users are plugged into the same station, their poetry (both visual and written) mingle and merge together to create an altogether new experience. This recombination serves as an emotive metaphor for the subtleties of shared experiences.

The visual poems are a combination of video clips and lexia that are carefully composed prior to the user’s input. The content of these elements deals extensively with the human body’s dependence on technology, questioning its presence in our everyday lives and how (if) we could survive without it. Influenced by N. Katherine Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman, we explore both the terror and pleasure of the current human situation. Control over technology is a mere illusion in the posthuman context, driving us to terror when we perceive that we are no longer the masters of our machines. However, we can arrive at pleasure when we release antiquated notions of humanity and allow the full integration of technology and humanity. In React | Recombine | Reconsider, the user straddles the fine line between terror and pleasure; we play upon natural the apprehension of taking a plug that is attached to your own body and inserting it into an unknown electrical socket and reward users who overcome that fear with images and text that alternately rejoice in and reject technology.

The recombinant nature of the loose narrative encapsulated in React | Recombine | Reconsider was inspired by Kurosawa’s classic film Rashamon. There, truth is fluid, the flashbacks emphasizing its subjective nature as each person remembers the same event in a different way. Within the bounds of interactivity and gallery exhibitions, we aim to echo this insight on human behavior. Though the single user views an individual poem and may derive satisfaction from a solitary experience, her understanding of the larger piece will not be complete until she interacts with it in combination with other users. When she jacks into another body/station, she is presented with another experience that (while perhaps similar in content, mimicking the shared experience) is yet another account of the body’s interactions with technology.

This project implements the microcontrollers found on Basic Stamp circuit boards. Independent RC Time circuits in each mannequin gauge which electrical plug (with a unique amount of resistance) has been inserted into the socket. Serial connections send input data to Macromedia Director, which assigns the plug a series of video and text elements that are then output to 5” LCD screens embedded in the mannequins. When two or three users are plugged in at once, a new list of intermingled content is generated from the initial list assigned to each plug. One user sees 5 clips, and will always see the same five clips in the same order. Two users see 10 clips repeating, a pre-composed intermingling of both users’ initial poems. The response to three users is the same, with the exception that they will see 15 clips repeating. If the total amount of resistance changes (a new user plugs in, or a current user disconnects), the program starts over, regenerating the list of clips based on which users are currently interfacing with the machine.

Not only does React | Recombine | Reconsider bridge the gaps between the physical and the virtual, the self and the other, but it also allows for a personal inquiry of what it means to experience life in a world that allows little time or space for solitude. From the outset, when a user is given a piece of the exhibit meant only for them (both the plug and the poem), a sense of property and importance is communicated. But in allowing space for multiple variables, up to three different people interfacing with the same station, the impression of ownership of experience gives way to notions of infinite combinations that depend on one’s company. This transition from single to multiple illustrates one of the greatest changes in the concept of “presence” today – the idea that “being” can no longer take place in a solitary environment, that who we are and what we are becoming now takes place in a shared arena, a space altered by speed and technology.