[ISEA2008] Paper: Michal Ostrowicki – From the image of a person to its electronic incarnation

Abstract

The phenomenon of telepresence appeared with the development of electronic media and is to a large extent connected with the sense and nature of the image. As one of the basic concepts of cyberculture and electronic art, telepresence seems to broaden and increase the intensity of appearance, manifesting itself, for example, as an interactive image, language or electronic incarnation of a person. Telepresence is becoming more common and is to a certain degree almost imperceptibly shaping communication, influencing or even limiting other forms of contact in the real world. Through the multiplication of various interfaces, telepresence constitutes an arena for the coexistence in the electronic medium of images of reality and persons, together forming an electronic horizon of events, a community of electronic reality.

As M. Castells understands it, telepresence constitutes an electronic community which not so much represents some geographic, linguistic, or national community, but constitutes an independent and separate structure, a kind of Network community. As a property of art, telepresence can be combined with the interactive installation, whose beginnings can be found in the 70’s of the 20th century, for example, in the works of M. Krueger, theoretician and creator of electronic art. In his works one can observe and describe the appearance of the phenomenon of telepresence as influencing the character of inter-human relations that arise in the electronic environment. For R. Ascott, in turn, telepresence is associated with the Network proliferation of a person and nonlinear, multi-personal, and simultaneous contact.

At present the phenomenon of telepresence could be identified in various areas of electronic art, for example, in the art of monitoring, virtual reality, GPS, or Network or electronic intelligence. One might even say that in terms of art telepresence can be defined as the transferring of what is real to what is imaged and introduced into the electronic medium and the environment that corresponds to it.

  • Michal Ostrowicki, Department of Aesthetics, Institute of Philosophy
    Jagiellonian University, Poland

Full text (PDF) p. 359-360