Originally published in Flash Art Magazine, Vol. XXXII, #205,March - April 1999, pp. 51-52.

Much of the new media art bandwidth buzzes with the virtual gallery-- Web sites filled with visual or audio art that's been converted intoones and zeroes for all the world to experience on a CRT. But perhaps morerevolutionary is Web art that not only subverts the dominant distributionparadigm but also symbolizes a new genre, works that were unrealisablebefore the Network's wires were laid. Indeed, these projects not only usethe Web as a presentation forum, but could not exist without it. A handfulof artists are knee deep in that data-stream, combining cultural criticismwith creative engineering to produce art for and about the Web.

However, the analog world is not obsolete. Even as the line betweenvirtuality and hyperreality blurs, the digital will never replace the analog.They will co-exist. In fact, the points where the two intersect are oftenthe most fertile ground for avant-garde experimentation, both artisticand philosophic.

It's on this common ground between the real and the simulated that thetheoretical underpinnings of telerobotic art are synthesized.

"As the telescope and microscope raised epistemological questionsthat inspired Descartes' method of doubt, web cameras and telerobotic systemson the Internet suggest new epistemological terrain," writes Ken Goldberg,editor of the forthcoming MIT Press book on telerobotic theory, The Robotin the Garden.

Indeed, Goldberg has deemed this sub-genre of meta-knowledge "telepistemology,"how we know what we know when our perception is technologically mediated.Indeed, as distance or size obstructions to our vision disappear, questionsof authenticity, a desire for evidence, and a yearning for "proof"of what we see emerge. The power of telepresence can easily be overshadowedby our own fears of deception. How can we be certain that we were reallyviewing the real-time surreal red landscapes of Mars through Sojourner'selectronic eyes, and not pre-recorded special effects wizardry?

The "telepistemology" seed was first planted when Goldbergco-directed the groundbreaking Telegarden (1995) and Mercury Project (1994)installations, which put the control of complicated robot arms in the handsof the online user. "Is it possible to distinguish the virtual fromthe distal?" Goldberg asks.

New media, yet classic conundrums of contemporary art -- questions ofreality, representation, and reproduction. "When the original artifactis distant either in space or in scale, the corporeal experience requirestechnologies such as WWW-telerobotics," Goldberg says. "Ratherthan diminishing the aura of the original artwork, these technologies enableit."

A seed needs light to sprout. Preferably sunlight, the natural nutrientbehind photosynthesis. The light at Mawson Station, Antarctica is bright,the sunlight reflecting off the snow and ice. The seed on a pedestal inthe Multimedia Center Kibla Art Gallery thrives on that light from theSouth Pole, but also from locales scattered around the world -- Tokyo,Sydney, Moscow. Imported light. Sunlight converted to digital data, transmittedacross the globe, and recreated with pixels on a video projector feedingthe seed underneath this virtual sun. A camera trained on the pedestalprovides feedback for the Web participants.

"Teleporting an Unknown State is a biotelematic interactiveinstallation," says creator Eduardo Kac, assistant professor of artand technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. "Inother words: it is a computer-based telecommunications piece in which abiological process is an integral part of the work. The installation createsthe experience of the Internet as a life-supporting system."

Whether the plant thrives or dies is up to the artwork's online audience.Eight images from Web-connected digital cameras trained on skylines aroundthe world are captured by the gallery's Internet server and displayed atthe Teleporting An Unknown State Web site. Online viewers select one ofthe images for projection onto the soil containing the seed. After fiveminutes, the image is turned off, denying the seed "sunlight"until the next user logs in.

"The installation takes the idea of teleportation of particles(and not of matter) out of its scientific context and transposes it tothe domain of social interaction enabled by the Internet," Kac writes.

Kac's experiments in telecommunication span more than a decade --[www.ekac.org/ornitorrincoM.html][www.ekac.org/raraavis.html]from the telerobotic Ornitorrinco Project (1986) through Rara Avis (1996), a networked artifical macaw mounted inside a cage with other birds. AWeb-connected video camera inside Kac's macaw provided viewers -- boththose in the gallery wearing a headmounted display and others online receivinglive video feeds -- a bird's eye view inside the aviary.

"In my art work I'm very interested in creating situations thatconvert the Web into an open social space, into a forum for dialogue andinteraction," says Kac. Dislocation of Intimacy by Ken Goldberg andBob Farzin [www.dislocation.net]

Tucked away in a corner of a UC Berkeley robotics laboratory, a smalllight-proof box containing a mix of secret objects is wired to the Internetand awaiting an audience. This is the Dislocation of Intimacy, Goldberg'squintessential experiment in telepistemology.

Via an elegant Web interface, online viewers select a combination oflights to turn on and off inside the box. Seconds after hitting the "Proceed"button, a digital snapshot of the silhouettes created by the objects underthe user's chosen lighting condition appears on the Web site. The naturallygrayscale images are surreal and mysterious, reminiscent of Rayograms orMoholy-Nagy's eerie optical experiments.

"Electric light is a pure communications medium precisely becauseit has no content," says Goldberg, paraphrasing a Marshall McLuhanquote. "In this case, the medium is the message."[www.srl.org/shows/zkm]Further Explorations in Lethal Experimentation by Mark Pauline and EricPaulos of Survival Research Laboratories

Inside Tokyos ICC gallery, a snapshot of armageddon is developing rightbefore the eyes of dozens of spectators and live TV cameras. A glimmeringtrack robot similar to the devices the police use to defuse bombs is scurryingalong the floor of the gallery, controlled over the Web. It approachesa second stationary mechanical contraption -- known as the button robot-- and the track robot's mechanical arm extends to push one of the giantbuttons on its partner in crime. Three metal arms on the button robot,outfitted with fresh squid, flail rapidly, but the audience's eyes quicklyshift to a large video screen behind the robots. Pictured on the screenis the live image from a Webcam mounted on an air rocket launcher -- armedwith explosive-filled soda cans -- outside a machine shop in San Francisco.Moments after the track robot at the ICC taps the trigger on the buttonrobot, the air rocket launcher fires, obliterating a moving target in itssights. Crowds in San Francisco, and Tokyo, cheer in unison. For betteror worse, that was the first day that lethal machinery was operated overthe Internet.

"The hope is that with works that have a familiar technology interfacebut that manifest an unexpected (and hopefully provoking) real physicaloutcome, individuals will continue to question technology and understandour place within its world," says co-creator Eric Paulos. Beginningwith that Tokyo event, titled Increasing the Latent Period in a Systemof Remote Destructability, San Francisco's infamous machine performanceart group Survival Research Laboratories have created telepistemologicalTuring Tests for the Web98 Conference in San Francisco and the openingof ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. The method behind the madness is always thesame: enable anonymous users to operate extremely dangerous equipment withno sense of corporeal connection. Then stand back. "Part of the funfor me is knowing that people online are wondering if what they're doingis fake, or if police are going to be knocking on their door any minutebecause things accidentally got out of hand," Pauline says.

According to old Wall Street lore, the lengths of womens' hemlines isaffected by the Dow. The better the market, the more leg shown. So whynot hardwire the connection? That's the idea behind Nancy Paterson's StockMarket Skirt [www.bccc.com/nancy/skirt.html],the Toronto-based media artist's first work for the Web.

First shown this year at the Bell Centre for Creative Communicationsin Toronto, and also visible via a Webcam, a mannequin known as "Judy"sports a blue taffeta and black velvet party dress near several computermonitors displaying stock ticker information. A computer program automaticallypulls stock prices from online quote pages and determines whether a hiddensystem of motor and pulleys should raise or lower the skirt. While mosttelerobotic works are controlled by individuals via the Web, the hemlineon the Stock Market Skirt is affected by "post-human" digitaldata. "Responding to a dynamic feed of pure data, Stock Market Skirtis interactive with the internet itself, the global flow of information,"Paterson says. "It's interactive with culture, insofar as stock marketsare a manifestation of the collective unconscious of a capitalist society."

Indeed, Paterson notes, users could affect the skirt by trading stockin whatever company her software is tracking at the moment. "I describeStock Market Skirt as a cyberfeminist fashion statement -- my post-postmoderntake on the convergence of technology, fashion and feminism," Patersonsays. Indeed, convergence -- of people, media, and ideas -- seems to beat the heart of telepresence art.

David Pescovitz is a contributing editor to Wired and I.D. Magazine.
He has written about art, culture, and technology for the Los Angeles Times,and New York Times.

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