How does my body feel in an online 24/7 economy, in which day and night, future and past, merge in a permanent NOW? How does my body feel in this 'timeless time'?
In Tele_Trust tangible bodies connect in networked 'timeless time'.
9. What Time Zone?
Central in the networked time of Tele-Trust is the database. During the performances the database is continuously fed with portraits of DataVeil wearers; and with readable / audible statements by smartphone users. Each time the database is triggered, it combines one of these portraits randomly with a statement. In this way, the personal portraits and statements are continuously relating to each other in different configurations. The combination of portraits and statements form temporal identities which are never fixed, but which are in a state of ungoing transformation. The statements and portraits are shown worldwide on smartphone screens and city public screen facades.
During ElectroSmog 2010 audience members simultaneously wore DataVeils in three different time zones: in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; in Dunedin, New Zealand and in Banff, Canada.
By touching their bodies in the DataVeil, participants connect real time with each other; in past and present various local time zones, both virtually and physically, merging various public spaces worldwide. Together, the DataVeils constitute a distributed community. Participants experience a very hybrid meeting; on the edge of being physically and virtually together.
‘In emerging network culture, subjectivity is nodular...I do not have a fixed identity, nor do I exist as a discrete individual. My spatial and temporal coordinates are diffuse and indefinite.’
(William J. Mitchell in ME++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City).
URBAN PUBLIC SPACE BECOMES MEDIATED PUBLIC.
