The Shape of the Stone Was Stoneshaped Between the Generations of Dick Higgins and David Rokeby Lisa Moren

09 moren 9/2/05 11:31 am Page 69 The Shape of the Stone was Stoneshaped Between the generations of Dick Higgins and David Rokeby lisa moren Whereas my body, taken at a single moment, is but a conductor interposed between the objects which influence it and those on which it acts, it is nevertheless, when replaced in the flux of time, always situated at the very point where my past expires in a deed. Bergson 1991: 78–9 At first glance it may seem that a programmer clichés, through collage techniques in time and and builder of multi-media surveillance-to- space. Rokeby, although working in new media sound systems in the current São Paolo tools, consciously broke from the philosophy of Biennale has little in common with the demate- the media generation and worked distinctly as a rializations of a Fluxus artist, or in the direct software artist, who romantically makes art experiential forms of the Happenings art from the scratch material of code (Manovich movement. However, the fundamental gestures page 4 ‘Generation flash’). An examination of a within interactive art of the 1990s can be found selection of work by these two artists, and their in the corporeal work of Fluxus, performance relevant contemporaries, provides a point of art, Situationism, process art, participatory convergence regarding the mechanical transfer- works and Happenings generated in the 1960s. ence of ideas from the body to the computer and The notion that the viewer completes a work the transformation of the subject through manifested itself literally with the emergence of empowering the spectator to participate as interactive art. This notion, idealized in litera- content provider. This empowerment questions ture and art throughout the 20th century, had the inventive role of the artist since he or she is prior origins evident in participatory art not the primary producer of content. Through produced globally in the 1960s, including the paradigms of what Higgins coined ‘blank struc- work created within performance art, Happen- tures’ and Rokeby referred to as the exoskeleton, ings and Fluxus. the inventive roles of these artists may be Co-founder of the Fluxus movement, Dick examined. Higgins (1938–98) coined the term Intermedia A utopian promise of technology is one of a in the 1960s; artist/programmer David Rokeby direct experience through a ‘calm technology’ (b. 1961) first spoke of interactivity as an art (Mark Weiser, former chief technologist at form 10 years before he pioneered the popular Xerox PARC in Horizonzero, Thinking about genre in the 1990s. Leaving behind the gener- MIT’s Tangible Bits, Tom Sherman) where the ation of the modernist artists whose romantic interface is so transparent and intuitive that it genius creates works from scratch, Higgins acts on what we think without it being apparent fueled the media artist generation which that it exists. Rokeby dispels the notion that critiqued the media, history and art world interfaces are navigational structures for 69 Performance Research 9(3), pp.69–84 © Taylor & Francis Ltd 2004 09 moren 9/2/05 11:31 am Page 70 directly experiencing or even accessing content. machines in his installations. Higgins mechan- Moren On the contrary, interfaces are the content for ized his performers in the same way that Phillip interactive works, and we will miss the point if Glass mechanized his musicians or Merce Cun- we are cognizantly unaware of them. Rokeby ningham mechanized his dancers. Bergson’s dis- explains that ‘the rush to stuff content into cussion of memory relates to how performers interactive media has drawn our attention away were used as transitory conductors of Higgins’s from the profound and subtle ways that the art system. At each moment the performers interface itself, by defining how we perceive and describe the art by acting out content of their navigate content, shapes our experience of that own invention. Change the performers and the content. If culture, in the context of interactive content is changed but the art system remains media, becomes something we “do”, it’s the the same. This approach is precisely the distinc- interface that defines how we do it and how the tion between the paradigm and syntagm that “doing” feels.’ Because the entertainment Lev Manovich describes. The paradigm is a industry is leading the field, ‘The interface database organized by ideas, concepts, literary becomes a hardened and brittle perceptual or technical figures, while a syntagm is a exoskeleton which we can’t easily question or narrative with linear grammar chronologically redefine’. If interfaces do replace our direct producing concepts. The artwork of Higgins, experience to negotiate content with people, Alison Knowles, Alan Kaprow, Ken Dewey, information or knowledge, then that experience Robert Bozzi, Wolf Vostell and other Fluxus and is fundamentally altered by the interfaces we Happening artists of the 1960s sometimes engage in. Interfaces, though not necessarily of allowed participation from the audience into the any skilled quality, offer information, wisdom or art paradigms. The 1960s art paradigms that an experience from one form (system, person or emerged complete with modules, loops, cueing people) to another form (system, person or systems, feedback, random chance and variable people). Therefore, by redefining the exoskelton outcomes were picked up in the form of of the interface, Rokeby has deepened the computer code materialized from these same participatory relationship between the artist conventions by 1980s and 1990s software and the viewer as well the presentation and per- artists (Manovich). With the same nervous ceptual experience of art. energy that propels today’s software artists to Redefining the interface between producer work through the night writing code that will and audience is a fundamental goal in the automatically execute all the permutations of a diverse body of work produced by the late Dick composition, Higgins worked straight through Higgins. Human characteristics, such as intelli- several days without sleep, typing, editing and gence, empathy, sensitivity and responsiveness, collating all the permutations of his composi- thinking, feeling are always used to describe tions. The overlap came to full fruition when Rokeby’s art machines. His art machines can be Higgins wrote code on a Fortran IV software threatened, they like things or can be stimu- program between 1967 and 1970, producing lated, they even have visceral poignancy and an scores of poetry, scripts and even a novel. With intangible spirituality, or they can be shamanis- James Tenney, Higgins’s partner Alison Knowles tic. The art of Dick Higgins, on the other hand, is wrote the first computerized poem ‘The House described with terms such as intermedia, of Dust’. It is no coincidence that when, from the modules, matrices, blank structures, random 1980s on, art systems were fully replaced with chance, exemplativist work and variable actual machines, the body’s obsolescence and a outcomes. These mechanical/human-like romantic notion of its loss became a fixture in descriptions are ironic in that Higgins used theories of embodiment. Precedence for this people in his early productions and Rokeby uses transference occurred between even earlier 70 09 moren 9/2/05 11:31 am Page 71 generations such as Experimental Art and Tech- alteration regarding the expectation of the roles nology’s (E.A.T.) 1966 performance series ‘Nine in both the artist and the viewer. Evenings: Theater and Engineering’ at Armory Rokeby also sees the world as a fully modern Hall, which included John Cage, David Tudor, system of interrelationships; he sees the Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and mechanics of these interrelationships as Frank Stella. Cage used photo cells to interpret abstract and, therefore, not subjugated by the movement of dancers, and in Rauschen- names; he sees that the computer, not dissimilar berg’s interactive piece ‘Open Score’, tennis per- to Higgins’s view of theater, is a way to create an formers used wireless rackets to trigger the alternative world where interrelationships can Stone lights off in the audience, one light at a time, be freshly defined; he believes that the experi- until the theater was dark. When the theater ence is allowed entry into that world through of was dark, infrared cameras recorded hundreds interactivity and that the mirroring effect of performers whose haunting greenish images inherent in interactivity is central in producing were projected on a screen. The transference spectator-driven content. In fact, Rokeby first Shape from body object to simulated subject was saw these relationships through an art school complete, and when the lights were turned on exercise, reminiscent of Zen studies, in which he The the stage was as blank as Rauschenberg’s was instructed to stare out of his classroom famous white paintings. Other pivotal artists window for two hours. who cross between the generations of media artists and software artists include Peter blank as content Weibel, Jeffrey Shaw, Stelarc and Lynne Dick Higgins theorized that the exploration of Hershman. These artists and others, such as ‘blank structures’ has had a profound effect on Diana Burgoyne, moved from doing perform- artists’ approach toward subject-matter in the ance work themselves to creating interactive latter half of the 20th century, just as form and installations, exchanging their own bodies for the object had on the earlier part of the century. that of the audience’s. Naively or with foresight, The concept of the blank structure has to do Higgins’s curiosity that led to mechanizing his with the notion of systemic paradigms, which performers in the first place differs signifi- grew from Higgins’s interpretation of the work cantly from the results of the complete transfer- of his contemporaries and the work of former ence of body to machine in Rokeby’s work. avant-garde artists, such as his mentor John Higgins was inspired by a set of belief systems Cage.

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