The Life: in Mixed Reality
by Strategy Human Adah Parris
The other week, I was speaking to someone about the recent Marina Abramović’ The Life: in Mixed Reality exhibition that was hosted at the Serpentine Gallery in London and curated and produced by Tin Drum (https://www.tindrum.io/).
This was to be groundbreaking immersive experience because the artist was working with Mixed Reality (XR) digital technology in the Magic Leap One headsets.
(Mixed reality (MR), sometimes referred to as hybrid reality, is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time.) Wikipedia
I prefer to unbundle the use of the word ‘technology’ as being ubiquitous with digital technology.
(Magic Leap One is a head-mounted virtual retinal display… which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real world objects, by “projecting a digital light field into the user’s eye”) Wikipedia
Several people I know went and had mixed reactions to the piece. Some were fans of Marina’s work, some were not, but wanted to experience using a Magic Leap One headset, and some were somewhere in-between.
From the Serpentine’s website:
“The Life is a performance piece, lasting 19 minutes, that builds on the artist’s long-standing fascination with the notion of material absence. The use of Mixed Reality allows Abramović to further explore how to use her own body as subject and object, mapping new territory at the intersection of technology and performance.”
I believe that Art, like life, is supposed to make you feel something, even if you come away disappointed then it has evoked something in you for further exploration.
As a tech geek, I was also curious about the tech and the Marina experience. If I’m honest, I don’t always connect with modern art but I’m always open to new experiences that will help to question and challenge some of my biases and views of my world.
I recently had another conversation about The Life with another fellow culture vulture who said that they were disappointed. They said that they were a fan of Marina’s work, but didn’t quite connect with this piece. They said that Marina is know for pushing boundaries and being controversial and the fact that she wasn’t there in person, it felt different, odd, disconnected from her and her previous work.
I suggested that maybe that was the point.
To place us in an environment in which we would be confronted with a virtual manifestation of what we would traditionally experience in-real-life. That perhaps this was not just about Marina, but also about the future of our human-to-human interactions.
Maybe the Art piece was trying to get us to ask ourselves more questions about our mental, physical and emotional connection with ourselves and other humans, through an immersive digital experience.
Unfortunately many of our current human-to-human digital interactions have become so commoditised (such as with our use of Facebook, video and messaging apps) that we can become blasè at the lack of real-life human connection. So when we find ourselves using new and more immersive digital technologies, trying to ‘connect’ with what we know to be a ‘real’ human, we feel uneasy, something doesn’t feel right.
Perhaps that was the intention after all, or at least a subtext. To not present answers but to get us to ask ourselves more questions.
To provoke.
It’s definitely food for thought, as the lines between the virtual and real world are becoming blurred, what will be the impact on the future human-to-human interactions and experiences?
And, will that change our views of our relationships with others and with digital technology and more importantly, with our part of our identity as humans?
A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at an event on the Embodied Future Self, with some other Futurists, and decided to start by looking up the etymology of the word embody;
VERB
Be an expression of or give a tangible or visible form to (an idea, quality, or feeling)
‘a national team that embodies competitive spirit and skill’
1.1 Provide (a spirit) with a physical form.
‘nothing of the personality of the Spirit as embodied in Jesus will be lost’
Include or contain (something) as a constituent part.
‘the changes in law embodied in the Children Act’
Next, I pondered on the idea of the ‘future self’.
On the one hand we have people using technology to enhance and/ or augment the idea of their (our) future selves and associated relationship with others.
Moon Ribas is an avant-garde artist and cyborg activist who has an online seismic sensor implanted into her in her elbow that allows her to feel earthquakes through vibrations. Her work, enables to explore her world with these new ‘senses’, technologically enhancing her ‘future self’.
On the other hand, there is a ground swell in people going down the wellness route, using plant medicine, such as Ayahuaca to connect with themselves (or higher sources depending on your personal view), to reconnect with and enhance their senses. Taking a more spiritual and metaphysical route to exploring, connecting and redefining the ‘future self’.
I don’t believe that one path is better than the other, but in fact, both are either end of the same spectrum of understanding and defining the future human and consequently our relationship with others.
What if these two words were brought together, to share their perspectives, knowledge, insights and establish an ‘embodied’ exploration of the future self?
I would take it one step further, and suggest that this exercise in collective intelligence could have a profound impact on all human-to-human interactions and so the ‘future self’ is in fact ‘future selves’.
We, not just, I.
It starts with the individual, but once we have a better understanding of our own identities, our relationship with our environment we can then begin to look at, and take responsibility and be conscious of and for our interactions and hence relationship(s) with others.
Perhaps digital technology is just another medium to facilitate these connections. But ultimately, it starts with understanding what it means, or will mean to be human before we can start to think about our future selves and the idea of identity and therefore collective intelligence, or embodiment.
And so maybe, Marina Abramović’ and the team at Tin Drum, are not just Artists, Technologists and Creative Producers but also philosophers and social anthropologists.
And that’s the type of ‘Futurist’ I aim to be, one who looks at the human and social impact of digital technology. One who asks questions of myself and provokes similar questions in others, because, once we have asked ourselves this questions, we can’t unthink them.
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