Introduction by Caroline Nevejan

Information- and communication technology offers new possibilities to connect. The opportunity to synchronize in time, even when being in far distant places and in different time zones, makes people happy because technology facilitates communication, information, collaboration, and even the joining in moments of celebration.

In the networked society many different types of data become part of our human experience. A phone call, an SMS, a Skype session, Facebook postings, email and search results create a sphere around us in which we meet each other and also meet our selves. Different networks combine as much data as possible to target and inspire individual behaviour. Today this so-called ‘profiling’ results in smart marketing strategies and also affects the way political agencies and secret networks operate while democratic control is not core to these systems.

Internet technology, originally designed for the military, aims to facilitate autonomy and self-organisation as a way to survive a global crisis of any sort. This quality of the Internet resonates in the experience of millions of people. However, today technologies are developed in a neoliberal global ‘free zone’ and human dignity and the well-being of our planet are at stake. No International Court or the United Nations, for example, demand specific design and engineering principles to safeguard human dignity and ecological balance.

Faced with ecological crisis, climate crisis, a financial crisis and an urban civic crisis in which fewer and fewer people trust other people they do or do not know, the same ‘old’ potential of technology can be used to design ‘participatory systems’. Participatory systems, technological platforms to which social structures, agency and human dignity are at the core, help share resources and organize new ways of distributing energy, food, water, healthcare, education, culture and more. In participatory systems, social networks and infrastructure merge to monitor and inspire behaviour of those who participate.

People like to participate, like to be part of a larger whole. In families, in neighbourhoods, in communities and organizations of all sorts, and as current activity on the Internet shows, people like to share.

A new era dawns within which a ‘planetary perspective’ of the social- and ecosystem upon which all life depends, is fundamental. In this era collaboration and sharing in specific and compartmentalized ways – with respect for the earth, its resources and each other – needs to be designed from a local and global perspective at the same time. Fundamental to such ‘participatory systems’ is, how human beings can accept responsibility and will be proud to do so. Participation needs to include that people can be witness to each other.

For thousands of years the being-witness-to-each-other defines dynamics in religious and non-religious families, communities, business and organizations. In the being-witness-to-each-other, trust and truth are negotiated and as a result social structures are shaped. When negotiating trust and truth, people have to take responsibility for their words and deeds. Results of such negotiation, the shared authoring of outcomes, inspire meaning to emerge and cultures to rise.

Being witness and bearing witness to each other is fundamental to the emergence of social structures. By seeing someone doing an action, this action becomes a deed. As a witness one can intervene, take responsibility for what happens next, or testify about what is or has happened and take responsibility for the perception and responsibility for one’s words and deeds. Being and bearing witness acquire a new potential because technology mediates communication and this challenges human experience to the core. Being connected no longer necessitates that human beings are physically witness to each other to accept responsibility for the situation in which they are engaged. New types of witnessing are emerging. For the development of sustainable social structures in future networked societies, witnessing is fundamental. It is key to establishing trust and truth; it is key to a human being’s potential to take responsibility for one’s own life and another’s; and it is key to emerging social structures at large.

In the persona of the witness truth as ‘clarity in perception’ and truth as ‘ethical action’, come together. In truth as ‘clarity of perception’ a witness accepts responsibility for what he or she perceives, judges the situation and testifies to others in communities, organizations, media and courts. When accepting to be witness, and to contribute to truth as an ‘ethical action’, people accept the possibility as a witness and negotiate what should happen next. Today’s ubiquitous technologies affect the process of witnessing in many places and at the same time in other places not at all.

Being witness to each other, having the possibility to address and respond to one another, generates unexpected outcomes. One dares to tell a story one otherwise would not, because a witness accepts a shared responsibility for what is said or will be done. The witness is a courageous persona who accepts risks and challenges when entering the negotiation about the truth and what is good to do. When being witness to hardship like illness, a witness is vulnerable and has to endure situations in which one cannot do anything but to have presence so people will not feel alone and left out. Being witness is the source for complex feelings like compassion, courage, solidarity, endurance and perseverance. Communities and societies benefit when these feelings are part of social dynamics. Trust can f lourish and well-being improves.

Facilitating people to be witness to each other in participatory systems is an enormous ambition and its complexity is beyond most imagination. However, many ingredients have been and are being explored in a variety of social, political, scientific and professional practices. While the new era in the 21st century dawns and human life as we know it is at stake, we have to rethink how we want to be witness to each other: to people we love and relate to, to people we know at a distance and to people who are strangers whose presence and behaviour ultimately also inf luence our own. In participatory systems these bits and pieces can be connected provided that we, as human beings, understand how we can be witness to each other when local and global social dynamics merge.

Making connections as we do on the Internet for example, may not necessarily be the same as being witness to each other. The speed and scale of digital technology create an abundance of data and communication as never before. When not sharing time or space, when not having the possibility to physically touch and intervene, can we be witness to each other? And how does the abundance of media and data affect what we do here and now? How is it that we are witness to each other in a networked world? How do social structures change?

Since the 1980’s in Paradiso in Amsterdam and in a variety of other contexts ‘networked events’ are being orchestrated in which on-and off line audiences participate and engage. Social groups, government officials, hackers, scientists, business people, political activists and artists participate and explore how new technologies may contribute to make a better – more human, more just and more sustainable – world. The contribution of artists in these events is often unique. Unlike others they are capable of sketching today’s footprint on the future. Because artists engage with a feeling and deeper knowing in the place and time in which they live, they are sensitive to the traces we make today that set the scene for tomorrow.

Human experience in building and maintaining infrastructures, including immaterial infrastructures such as a judicial system or a market place, has been built for centuries. The ubiquitous presence of media and social networks around the globe is only a decade old. Nevertheless, essential qualities of these networks are already part of human experience. This artistic research aims to unfold issues we need to take into consideration when designing participatory systems that facilitate witnessing in their core. In this book 13 artists respond to the question ‘What happens when one is witness to the other?’ by making art work and reflecting upon it. Each contribution offers a different perspective. Some artists specifically address the networked world; others address today’s human condition.

The YUPTA framework, acronym for “being with You in Unity of Time, Place and Action”, has and is guiding the artistic research of Witnessing You and the larger research program on Participatory Systems at Delft University of Technology. When presence and trust are at stake, as they are in the emerging network society, not only time and place acquire new configurations, also the way we relate to each other and the possibilities to act we have, change. With the artists each of these dimensions has and is being explored. Specific contributions shed light on the 4 dimensions of change in time, place, action and relation, providing more insight in the factors involved.

With the ubiquitous presence of media and the Internet in the day-to-day life of at least 1 billion people (which is 1/6 of humankind anno 2012) the experience of time is changing dramatically. Half the world population lives in cities where clock time rules. Services the Internet offers, are available around the clock in all time zones of the world. A ‘next nature’ is evolving in which social technological and biological systems merge.

Future participatory systems will include social, technical and biological rhythms to facilitate that the right thing can happen at the right time. Social, technological and biological participants synchronize performance. However, human beings need to be motivated for entering such engagement. Once engaged, they enter the process in which meaning and culture are created and negotiated.

In nature and between humans rhythms integrate. When children are raised on a farm it is natural to them to take care of animals. Accepting responsibility for those animals is part of the games they play. As the story goes, for children who live in the city milk comes from the supermarket. The city experience offers different opportunities than the farm; the playful acceptance of responsibility needs other strategies.

While targeting focused attention of audiences, in the constant ‘media-noise’ peripheral perception acquires more and more significance in individual lives. People need to have personal and empty time to be well.

Sensing time creates a personal time-space in which own experience can unfold. Music offers such time-space in which duration of time can be sensed.

People enjoy ‘to be part of a larger whole’, which is the essential definition of participation. When being engaged, time f lies. People are focused, contribute, fulfilled and have fun. The design of systems and structures has to be robust for being able to include undefined ‘empty time’ from which human experience can emerge. In simple systems and in complex systems, people find ways to participate and use the system or structure to contribute to experiences of their own.

The empty time-space for undefined experience is needed when participation includes being witness to each other. One has to realize though that this empty time-space can be used both in beneficial and detrimental ways. In situations of repression and deprivation the capacity for intelligent and playful participation is continuously challenged. Endurance, compassion and perseverance become a minute-by-minute personal fight for survival.

When giving testimony of detrimental situations to others by way of media, a witness becomes the embodiment of hope. Journalists travel around the globe to gather testimonies. For spectators however, these testimonies are mostly part of individual’s peripheral perception happening in between day-to-day chores. Being the news item and in need of hope, the experience of time is very different to the journalist’s sense of time.

A testimony about a tragedy of a lifetime, has to be communicated in seconds. When testimonies become part of a ‘media-avalanche’ and offer audiences the sense of synchronicity that news provides, their status changes. When the news fades away however, the instance of hope evaporates while the situation endures. Hope then has to be fuelled by imagination, as discussed later on, with possible political action as result.

In situations of repression, when human dignity is at stake, people are denied the right to be witness to each other and negotiate trust and truth to develop a shared understanding. When forced to participate in a detrimental system human beings also easily de-humanize and victimize each other and violence increases.

When testimony is presented as work of art, made to create experience for the spectator, an artist dramatizes and finds essential movement and qualities of a situation or issue to be addressed. He or she then creates a robust structure and leaves empty space-time for the spectator’s experience. Also here, imagination is fundamental to the process both for the artist and the spectator. Complex feelings like inspiration, compassion or beauty, define success.

There are many formats for giving testimony: having a conversation at the dinner table, telling a story to a friend, posting on the Internet, making photographs or film, participating in a television show, writing a novel, making painting, singing a song in church, making minutes of a meeting or giving testimony in court. Each of these ways in which we bear witness has its own time design, which inf luences how memory, imagination and experience merge.

Originally being witness refers to being physically present and ‘inscribing’ what happens with one’s body. One is physically present at the time in the place and what happens affects the witness as well. Ultimately place is the beholder of human experience, because it is where the physical body resides. The technology of networks is disembodied but network experience can be embodied and have considerable impact on how people live and love. However, in real places people can touch and smell and physically intervene in what happens next. People can cook a dinner and taste each other’s food. In networks, shared experiences in shared places become reference points for communicating qualities that technology cannot transmit. If you‘ve ever shared zucchini soup, only mentioning it will bring back the taste. Even though a communication sphere may be intense, there is always the potential moment where the lack of sharing the same place becomes painful. When people fall ill, when you really want to make love, when people are in danger, suddenly the communication sphere evaporates and a feeling of powerlessness dominates.

People experience place in many ways and stories are, as it were, written on the walls. Others recognize these signs of presence before and include these stories in their own experience, leaving traces as well. Often, even, the story of a place is so powerful that people do not perceive the physicality of a place as it is.

In social networks and other Internet sites people share stories, and a sense of place emerges. But can we be witness to each other in these networked narrative landscapes, as we are witness to each other in the street?

It is striking that when mediating presence, almost all networks turn out to have glass interfaces. What is it that glass does that permits us to mediate our presence to other places? Glass is transparent. In houses it shields us from wind and cold and in networks it opens up the world. Above all, glass transmits light and light deeply affects our sense of place.

At night in the dark the ocean is a different place than when the sun is making the water sparkle in the day. Glass always has a refractive index, which defines how light travels through the glass, and how we see the world as consequence. Sharpened lenses can turn the world upside down. Glass consists of sand and some other chemicals and these define how colour is perceived. Whether the world will look greenish, or blue or grey. Visual conventions help us define how natural something looks, but when in need to communicate colour for example, screens cannot do the job. Again here we are dependent on making references to a shared experience in a shared place for being able to communicate.

When being witness to each other, perception in mediated settings remains to be impoverished compared to meeting in real life. Shared strong experiences in real places provide solid references for inspiring communication and as result the potential quality of witnessing online improves.

Net works offer no distance and make no distinction

People see, hear and smell over distance and are capable of feeling connected when not even being in the same place. Through a letter, a phone call or during a Skype session people create spheres of togetherness. As a witness, one is not only part of an event; one witnesses an event as well. When telling a story, the storyteller and the listener are separated. To be witness includes taking a distance while being present in an event. In mediated communication the not sharing of the same place, is a given. But is this distance the kind of distance that a witness needs to be engaged?

Witnessing networks in real life negotiate distance continually. Some people are closer to each other than others. Specific conditions of trust increase proximity or they do not. Distance between different people weaves the social structure. Who witnesses whom and when and where with what result, is defined. Communities create ‘formats’ for having witnessed presence: when a child is born, when people get married, when work is celebrated, when people die and are mourned. Distinct places are an integral part of these formats. In a courtroom different positions of authority have distinct places in the space. A space for mourning is different than a space for celebration.

In social networks online distance is not perceivable nor is the experience of place profound. People connect to a network, enjoy each others contributions and engage. We can perceive the space between a body and a computer or other device we use, but not the space between participants in a network. The web of connections offers a sense of place, and with whomever is there we can connect, but social structures are more difficult to perceive. Because judging social situations online is more difficult, the potential ethical impact of one’s own actions is obscured. Witnessing when negotiating truth as in ‘clarity of perception’ and witnessing as in ‘ethical action’ are both not well defined anymore. Also negotiating trust becomes a challenge. One can decide to go with the flow, or not.

The ‘third witnessing’ perspective

When many people engage, when the flow is strong, emergence and self-organization define network dynamics. Unlike any other witness, networks can gather, aggregate and distribute data at great speed and scale in transparent ways. Also unlike any other witness, the network seems to be neutral.

When people engage online, they have a sense of authorship. Yet a feeling remains that one has some freedom to explore, without having to bear the consequences. One does not feel that one’s own contribution will make a difference. Witnessing between two people, or witnessing a situation of others interacting, is not as profound an experience as when being witness to such situations in real life.

The network offers a complete new witnessing perspective that was never available before. This ‘third witnessing’ perspective unfolds the rhythm and behaviour of all participants as a whole and potentially affects individual behaviour. For instance we can see how all the cars move and identify where traffic jams can be expected. As a result we can adapt our own trajectory. Such ‘alive information’, which changes all the time, is input for participatory systems. It allows effects of human behaviour to be identified real time and because this information is available to all who participate, this influences what people will do next. Dynamics in networks can be difficult to predict. When looking at the financial markets, no one can determine the flow. The phrase that is used again and again, is that people do not trust the market when it goes down and that trust is restored when the markets go up. To decide to jump in the f low is a matter of chance or ‘blind trust’. One cannot be certain how the flow will go. The third witnessing perspective includes all whom participate and addresses and responds to all who participate.

Between witnesses a sphere emerges, in which the possibility to act becomes manifest. Networks offer spheres that people are sensitive to and also include possibilities to act. When designing participatory systems, the third witnessing perspective is fundamental to its dynamics. The grand challenge is how the first and second witness perspective (me and you) can become part of these dynamics. How people can accept responsibility for words and deeds of their own self and other selves? How do people relate to each other in network environments?

In the process of witnessing, when negotiating trust and truth, meaning emerges. A witness signifies what he or she witnesses and culture is distinct in this signification. In Surinam a blue ribbon around the wrist of a child is a sign that someone close to her died. If I do not know the sign, I miss the meaning of the ribbon and may just think it is a bracelet. Through shared experience the process of signification is informed. Often though, meeting so many strangers in real life and online, we have no other option that to project our own culture to what we see or hear.

When meeting strangers processes of projection and identification define how we are witness to each other. In networks online, fewer cues for interaction are available than in physical reality. This opens up a space for projection that may hardly match desired off line physical interaction at all. Interacting with ‘intimate strangers’ is a new experience for human kind and inspires a possible new communication paradigm.

In media and in networks, large groups of people identify easily with people and situations. Dynamics of mass psychology as we know for many centuries, for better and worse, are fuelled with thousands of ‘likes’. Truth is no longer at stake; feelings take over. History has shown that such dynamics can be very detrimental for individual human beings, minorities and for larger groups of people as well. Careful deliberation, inspired by shared ref lection, results in negotiation of trust and truth. Facts matter, and include feelings as well.

Self-witnessing is core

When operating in the global network environment, self-witnessing is a necessity for preserving one’s own well-being as well as for the capacity to communicate with others. Reflection on one’s own ideas, actions, feelings and culture in relation to others inform the balance individuals need to maintain. In real life this is already not an easy process as children have to learn. In network environments this is a greater challenge. Also reflection includes daring to hesitate whereas in the digital world everything is ‘on/ off’. At the same time in networks, third witnessing perspectives contribute to the sense of self. Social networks function as mirrors in which we try to look good. If we smile, the network smiles.

We easily adopt images into our own construction of self. Self-witnessing should include the taking of responsibility for one’s words and deeds. Having an autonomous self that decides to be witness, is a condition for being able to be witness. In this decision process, one needs to be able to deconstruct the reality around. Imagination is fundamental to this capacity. Even though networks are full of imagery, deconstructing media and network noise, is not an easy task. Can we see the river when we swim in it?

The network consists of many individual contributions, but a single contribution bears fewer and fewer significance. This poses fundamental questions about the relation to self in network environments. Possibly it is not so much the relation to others that changes profoundly, but in the first place the relation to our selves that is undergoing deep change. Participatory systems have to address and facilitate the process of self-witnessing. In this process of being witness to one’s self, the self has importance, is significant and is fundamental to any witnessed participation.

In negotiating trust and truth, in deciding what actions to engage in, in expressing one’s perception, in telling stories about what happened, imagination inspires perception, thinking, feeling and reflection. Imagination helps to realize that things can be different. Imagination helps to express emotions and feelings. Because one has imagination one can anticipate consequences of possible actions. Imagination inspires the telling of stories. But most of all, imagination helps to be able to distance yourself from the situation you are in. Imagination provides the distance that the witness needs.

Imagination is a very real part of human existence. Experiences are understood with the help of imagination, and imagination helps to convey experiences to others. Imagination is the vehicle through which people can address and respond to each other. Because I can imagine how you feel, I have compassion. Or because I can imagine the consequences of what you do, I judge your acts. Also, imaginary experiences can be as real as experiences in real life and bring well-being or suffering as result. When human beings identify deeply with a situation, imagination becomes part of perception.

Networks produce different types of images and visualisations of data. But imagination needs more. For imagination to flourish, people need to share ideas and perceptions they have, they need to identify with each other. Imagination and fiction play an important role in process of identification and participation and one needs to be able to distinct between what
is beneficial and detrimental to one’s self.

Self-witnessing is fundamental to be able to participate in healthy and reliable ways, also in online worlds. It helps to embrace what is actually happening now as well as opening up one’s curiosity, which facilitates engagement with what is happening now. In professional contexts this self-witnessing is crucial for being able to relate to one’s own role in a productive manner.

Even in hybrid contexts the physicality of experience plays a significant role while it is clear that new formats for disembodied presence are being introduced. How the impact of the continuous absence of human body will evolve is unclear. It appears that a clear set of rules of engagement makes it possible for human beings to participate. Friction and resistance between systems and human beings who participate, can lead to engagement.

Because people engage and participate, new structures emerge and also systems adapt. Rhythms between people and rhythms between systems and people adapt to each other. Such integration, between different rhythms in social, technological and biological realities, needs to be motivated and inspired for becoming part of human experience. A robust structure in rhythm allows people to create their own experience in between in which personal empty time-space emerges.

To create moments of attention, in which meaning can emerge, is a great challenge in a hybrid context in which most perception is peripheral. There is so much information and there are so many connections.
Through for example music human beings experience time and awareness of attention can be nurtured. Specific moments of attention are those in which shared experience is celebrated. Such moments are of significance for human beings to endure and enjoy periods of engagement.

When one is witness to another, this artistic research shows that dramaturgy and composition of relations, actions, place and time between systems and people, make all the difference for human beings involved. In witnessing, previous experience and imagination have significant impact. Outcome of this research is that when one is witness to another, self-witnessing and imagination are fundamental to this process. Both self-witnessing and imagination are affected in the networked world.

The relation to our selves is undergoing serious change because networks are like mirrors and reflect the self image we have. But shared reflection with others seems to be more of a challenge because the performance of self in network environments does not allow for lingering and hesitation. As individuals we have grown accustomed to using media and networks all day long. None of us realizes that we are actually part of a grand global experiment in which human communication becomes dependent on digital data. The artistic research presented in this book suggests that in this new networked global society human dignity matters and that the concept of witnessing indeed inspires reflection about this.

When we hear a step in the doorway, we imagine a person entering our home. When we hear a laugh in the distance, we imagine how our loved one is in joy. When we remember and create each other’s presence our imagination fuels our mind. And when we think about the children to come, we need all the imagination we have to develop participatory systems and structures in which children can live together, full of imagination, witnessing each other and negotiating trust and truth in friendly ways. We need all the imagination of the world for the planet and our own witnessed presence to survive.