ARTIST STATEMENT:

As personal media devices become more ubiquitous in modern society, humans adapt and arrange behaviors around the usage of these digital consumer technologies. In particular, the increased accessibility to cheap digital cameras have brought on a new cultural phenomenon where taking snapshots or recording video clips -- of anything, anywhere -- has become a common preoccupation. More so now than any other era, we maintain an enormous collection of images from our personal lives through this frenzied use of digital photography. CommPose is a work that explores this contemporary habit, specifically with the usage of cellphone cameras.

Sharing digital photos is done easily and excessively on the Internet, sharing digital photos in physical space, on the other hand, is still very cumbersome. Therefore, these snapshots of "anything, anywhere" largely remain on the screens, shared online to a global community, but hardly shared with the physical and immediate local community. CommPose explores this gap between personal digital media and the physical community by asking the audience of that specific location to contribute their image to the installation using their cellphone's Bluetooth connection. Upon uploading, the image is added to a queue and displayed to the public in a rolling sequence with other images that came before, resulting in a picture-based chronicle composed entirely by the audience. CommPose can be arranged by the artist to fit the proper context of the installation site, but control over the images is given to the viewers completely. Since there is no delete function the images that have been uploaded stay in the viewing queue; therefore, the viewer is responsible for what they decide to put up for other people to see.

The locative aspect of this project is the crucial underlying theme. Since CommPose isn't connected to the Internet, its media can only be uploaded and viewed at the installation site. The work thus heightens the awareness of the physical presence of others. The end results from each installation site will always be unique. This method echos the bulletin boards found in college campuses, work places, coffee shops, or town squares, where people would put up posters and flyers to announce up-coming events, jobs, pets for adoption, etc. Over time, these bulletin boards express the evolution, memory, and character of that specific place, time and people. CommPose applies these qualities to our 'digital memory' represented by photos and videos taken and shared on a regular basis. By turning personal media into a public showcase, the work creates a mediated reality amongst people using a very intuitive and ubiquitous form of interactivity given today's technology.

Contemporary artistic practices appropriate cultural objects or habits in order to reflect on the state of the current society. Our current time and culture is heavily driven by consumer electronics designed to augment human communication. In order to adapt to the information age, humans have enforced technologies into their personal lives and over a brief period have gained an enormous amount of personal digital media. This project attempts to expose one aspect of personal media and to remind us of the human relationships and behaviors embodied within these electronic devices.

Mark Argo & Ann Poochareon

h o m e

BIOS:

Mark Argo is a Canadian-born new media artist living and working in Italy. By creating physical devices that serve as an interfaces for computing, Mark has been able to explore the spaces where humans and technology connect. He has worked with aspects of file sharing, mobile communication, wireless networks and wearable computing. His work has been internationally exhibited in France (MAMAC, 2004), Austria (Ars Electronica, 2005) and Japan (New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 2004), and has been featured in major technology magazines such as Wired (May 2004) and Linux Journal (Sept 2003). Recent major works include 'mobjects' (2004), a series of wireless devices that use mobile phones to explore new forms of emotional expression, and 'CommPose' (2005) a cameraphone-based installation that explores the intervention of private media in public spaces. Mark is currently in residence at the Fabrica Communication Research Center in Treviso, Italy.

Ann Poochareon is an artist, writer, performer, and technologist interested in using new media to create social statements. Her works take various forms, ranging from websites and videos to interactive installations and stage performances. She has been involved in the independent theatre community in both Chicago and New York, and has been internationally exhibited in places such as California (SIGGRAPH, 2003), France (MAMAC, 2004), Japan (Spiral Festival 2004) and Austria (Ars Electronica, 2005). Ann is an original member of Eyebeam's Contagious Media Research Group, and co-founder of 'Hello Kitty is Dead' Productions. In 2004, Ann received her masters degree from ITP, Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Currently, she lives in Northern Italy and works at Fabrica Communication Research Centre.