July 13, 2011

Not much yet, but there will be more. There should have been much more, much sooner, but to my embarrassment, I created this webspace, got distracted (I think by sleep) and then forgot that I had created it. Many of these were good distractions - birthday parties for nephews and nieces, art festivals I went to, a few writing projects ... but usually, I'm more on top of things than this, and a lot less forgetful.

As I explained elsewhere, a while ago, before going on to do other things (none of which, sad to say, raised the revenue I needed to do some of what I wanted and still want to do), the name "The Time Warp Cafe" is an acknowledgment of my creative debt to those who've worked in the medium before, whatever the medium I'm working in at the time might happen to be. By this, I don't mean to say that I'll be copying what somebody else did, pixel for pixel, and then sticking a red dot in there, and calling what results a new art piece. What I'll be building on is the concept, not the execution, of a variety of projects others have done, giving proper credit and enough originality in my effort that plagiarism will not be an issue. I would have explained the notion in the past, when I had a specific interactive art event in mind, by saying that if a visitor wished that he had seen something that had taken place in a previous year, he could maybe drop by and see something akin to a continuation of what had been there before, but not entirely. As if he had stepped into the past, almost, in a way, stepping through a time warp that would deliver him to an alternate past. Thus the name. I've since become largely disenchanted with that festival (for reasons that probably would not be unfamiliar to anybody who has been online for more than a few minutes), but not with the interests I picked up from it, so the name remains a good one.

This is a site that I hope to grow into, as I explore my circumstances, and see what is practical and what is not. Personal limitations - I tend to be a little mousy, something that I always work to shake off, and like a lot of people who don't have a lot of personal connections, I am very poor. Hence much of the mousiness, probably - poverty tends to promote social isolation, and those who've been out of circulation tend to feel awkward when they start getting back into circulation. These limitations could put a halt to any of a number of things I'd like to do, as they have in the past, but I am determined to see at least a few of my intended efforts become real, something that I do more than just daydream about

"Interactive Art" is a very broad category, that becomes only more so when we make it plural - the interactive arts. It is art that actively engages the viewer, turning a spectator into a participant. To take a very old example, think of a hedge maze. On its own, its a nice piece of gardening, but you can't experience a maze just by looking at it. You have to get in and wander around, and find your way through it. Something is asked of you by the piece, and unless you give it, you can't have the experience offered. Or one of Daniel Rozin's mirrors, one of which can be seen in this video, in which the artist explains the piece.

How does one speak of a reflection, even an artifically generated one, without making reference to that which is reflected? Again, the observer can not stand at a distance from that which he or she experiences, and have that experience, passively, but must rather engage with the piece and become a participant, on some level or another. Gaze statically into the mirror, and a static image follows. Move and the image moves with you, and you get repaid for your efforts with a more dynamic response from the piece. Unlike a painting, the piece, in some sense, knows that you are there. As with the maze, you don't merely consume the experience, you are part of it.

Or think of an improvisational theater piece in which the "stage" is the entire theater, and the audience finds itself up on that stage with the cast, the fourth wall dissolved, in an interactive theater piece. No hiding in a dark seat, there. The audience member is fully immersed in the play, and part of it. He does not witness the moment, he lives it.

Wander a darkened city late at night, through streets so much quieter and emptier than they once were, sit down to a drink consumed in the usual solitary way, with a very contemporary lack of conversation, and perhaps that moment will show why this sort of art is especially relevant to this era. Of the many things that used to be so taken for granted in urban life, and are so missing today, is the chance to not just look, but to do, to really be part of the scene in which one finds oneself. Where there was community life, now there is a seamless anomie so well established, that many can't even seem to conceptualize its absence. The interactive arts force the often reluctant participant out of a mental hiding place he's been encouraged to build over a lifetime, and by interacting with the piece and his fellow participants, to help him find his way out of a sort of prison that he didn't even know that he was in. What he gets, aside from a little pleasant strangeness - and strangeness is a greatly underrated quality - is a brief burst of community life, one that will leave him able to say "this is what I did" instead of just "this is what I saw", leaving him with another brief, welcome memory of the sort that tends to linger.

Interactive Art offers a sort of playground for adults, which might sound like damning with faint praise, if this is indeed praise, but why would it be? What is an adult, really, other than an old child who sometimes takes his own roleplaying a little too seriously? Are we really so different from the children we used to be, as we've been encouraged to think of ourselves as being? When an entire aspect of life is abandoned in the course of "maturation", is the person so changed growing as a result, or has he been diminished? If the answer to this question seems to be one obviously supportive of convention, then take a good look at what convention has left of so many of our elders, after a lifetime of such growth. In accepting limitation after limitation, they've become so mature, that at times, they barely seem to be alive at all, unable to make conversation, because they've run out of things to talk about, unable to relate to the era in which they find themselves, because they fell out of it years ago, from lack of participation in almost every aspect of it. To invite adults to come play, in something other than a conventionally approved manner (sports in youth and midlife and Bingo in somebody's supposedly golden years), might be against tradition, but what of it? It was a foolish tradition. It is well discarded.

What I would like to do ... I do have a graduate level background in Electrical Engineering, and rather more Mathematics than most engineers as well, all of which I'm reviewing at the moment. Certainly, I'm going to have enough of a theoretical background to design some nice circuitry. Nothing with moving parts, unless one counts the vibration of a piezoelectric material as movement, but light and sound can be done electronically, without gears. They can not, however, be done for free. I've received catalogs offering fabrication equipment, in the past, and was a little flattered, as a student, to find that manufacturers thought that I'd be able to afford any of this, the cheapest item running at a little over $20,000 US. Even if I could afford such things, I would know better than to work with dangerous materials and equipment, on my own. So, this is a limitation. Still, I do have a soldering iron, simple devices (op amps, transistors, etc) run for ... what ... about 25 cents apiece, is it? So, maybe a few simple devices. We'll see.

As for interactive theater ... I need collaborators. I can, and will post ideas on my pages, but will others be interested enough to reply? That's not for me to decide. And so on and so forth - this site is a work in progress, as it must be, as I respond to circumstances as they evolve. If all else fails, I can at least learn how to make flash graphics - a skill well worth knowing, and perhaps make this site a little more interactive. Whatever works. I'll just have to have the sense to be a little bit flexible, under the challenging circumstances.