Abstract

Keywords:
Telematic, telepresence, dreaming, coexistence, disembodiment, proprioception, phenomenology, everywhen, co-creation, happening

The practice of telematic arts is not immortalised in artefacts and collections but has and continues to be accessed, participated in, contributed to, and experienced Everywhen. This article positions the co-creative principles of telematic arts from the 1980s and my subsequent telepresence practice since the early 1990s as a lived experience in the context of The Dreaming, as understood by anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner. My installation Telematic Dreaming (1992) is discussed as a prime example of extending bodily ‘oneness’ in the specular image, within a patchwork of telematic artworks that expound the coexistent states of intimacy, touch, and empathy. These stories identify characteristic phenomenological findings that are analogous to Stanner’s account of The Dreaming. By reflecting on line-out video recordings from these telepresence installations, as well as early films, we experience the Everywhen. Like a ‘totem’ it teleports us into a collective narrative of those who participated in it. A story told in and between geographically dispersed encounters and events that unfolded in a collective state of flux.

• Paul Sermon is a Professor of Visual Communication at the University of Brighton, UK. He has worked for over thirty years as an active academic researcher and creative practitioner and has developed a series of celebrated interactive telematic art installations. Having worked under the visionary cybernetic artist Professor Roy Ascott as an undergraduate Fine Art student in the mid-1980s, Paul Sermon went on to establish himself as a leading pioneer of interactive media art, winning the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Linz, Austria, in 1991. It was an accolade that then took Paul to Finland to develop one of the most ground breaking telepresent video installations of his career Telematic Dreaming in 1992.