Telematic Embrace a love story?

Roy Ascott believed that cybernetics would not take over or destroy the creative process. Instead he thought that together they could be combined to create collaborative and interactive art. The idea of “art” transforms with each new idea and influences. The combination of ideas and practice forms a new style and type of art. The anti-art revolution would not of succeeded unless there was meaning and thought put into it. The fact that they commented on what art is relates to Jeffery Shaw’s comments on interface. If we comment on something that we use in a piece it makes the art stronger and more political. Fluxus’s movement really relates to the idea that Ascott discusses that things should always be in the process of development instead of being a finished product. They also believed that anyone could create a piece of art; this could be now easily done through cybernetics and the ability to have many people creating something. Overall the fact that cybernetics and the creative process work together would not damage art but only further develop a new type.

The tension in Marcel Duchamp’s piece, Large Glass, is a fight between the seduction of sexual attraction to the embrace and the fact that the figures seem machine like. It becomes a fight between humanistic and robotic love. The other thing that comes into play is the fact that we want to be part of the piece and yet we cannot become closer to it. We fight between the urge of wanted to be loved and the fact that we are kept at a distance. Duchamp’s piece also allows the viewers to interpret the piece how they please. They become more connected to the piece when they can personally decide the meaning of it. All artists, new media artist included, need to remember that viewers and participants will always interpret the meaning of the piece then how the artist imagined it. They have to be aware of the difficulty of prediction how the users will interact with the piece. The issues that arise with virtual worlds is that people can be immersed but they will never actually be in the alternative reality.