Interview with Artist Rosana Antoli and ArtBizTech’s Co-Initiator Jing Yi Teo on InAlt ID project
First of all, I would like you to tell us a little about yourselves. And, what brought you together?
Jing Yi Teo, Co-Initiator of ArtBizTech:
Back in mid-2021, ArtBizTech was in the phase of establishing itself as a consultancy that brings in artists as co-consultants who would open up new and creative perspectives for companies and organisations and their specific challenges. Irem brought Rosana’s work to me and we had the feeling that we had to reach out to Rosana because we were both captivated by her work. So we reached out with a rather open approach with no end-objectives, through a cold email, and we talked about Rosana’s practice, research, aspirations, and she opened her “yellow folder” of yet-to-be materialised ideas, and we knew we were going to work together one way or another.
Rosana Antoli, Artist:
I am an artist with more than 10 years of professional experience. In my artistic research I am always looking for new challenges to push the boundaries of my practice. One axis of my work is the representation of identity through movement or gestures. Around one year ago was when ArtBizTech and I crossed paths, and they opened to me a new arena for artistic interaction as it is Web3 and the Metaverse.
What are the concepts and topics that have been occupying your mind mostly? Or what are the last concepts you have added to your conceptual reservoir?
Rosana Antoli:
In the last years I have been focused in new relational practices, not only in the traditional physical representations in the contemporary art scene but also in the digital world. I am exploring how fictional narratives open possibilities for richer dialogues with the spectators and my work. And I understand the aquos as a state of mind, where different voices between human and non-human share the same ecology…
Can you tell us a little bit about your art practice? What made you focus and think about gestures?
Rosana Antoli:
I started my research in gestures during my MA at Royal College of Art in London. Dance and choreography are an axis of my practice, and to be able to understand them properly I had to dissect them into their minimal expression.
Gestures are part of our everyday life, we are continuously performing them, and despite being such a minimal expression they can reveal a big part of our culture and identity. Plus they imply a lot of poetry.
There is a saying in architecture; “first we shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.” It’s like a two-way, reflexive relationship. What kind of relationship do you think we have with our gestures?
Rosana Antoli:
It is exactly the same principle for gestures.
Our movements are conditioned depending on our habitat and context. Try to move in a close space and try to do the same movement in an open space like a forest. Your gestures change, our bodies change. It is a relational variant. Our bodies are mimetic and contagious.
How would you define “identity”? Do we have a single one, or can we have multiple? What is included in our identity?
Jing Yi Teo:
The Martinican writer and philosopher Edouard Glissant often affirmed that “I can change through exchanging with others, without losing or diluting my sense of self.” When you look at this statement in the context of post-colonialist thought, it makes a lot of sense, to understand that a person’s identity is only ever singular, but evolves, hybridises and fragments, in relation to others. Borrowing this to the context of UX, considering the different interfaces through which we encounter and experience the world, we also (re)formulate ourselves over and over again, according to how the interface was designed, on many levels.
Rosana Antoli:
We have a cultural identity, that’s attached to our sense of belonging and to our learnt behaviors. But this identity and how we experience it is not a closed battlefield. Our identity is fluid, porous, non binary, and constantly changing. Like water. To find a way to represent our variable self expressions is one of my mottos.
Last year at UXistanbul, we questioned “What happens to the rest of our bodies that fall outside the screen?” How would you summarize your answer to this question?
Rosana Antoli:
The talk I gave during UX Istanbul was called ‘Permeating the Screen’ and still it is a very relevant topic to me. We were in the middle of a pandemic and we were forced to learn new digital ways to relate and work with each other.
The screen became the window where we chose (as directors) what to show, what to reveal. In physical encounters we can not control that. The filter is fascinating.
How do technological developments, especially Metaversal ones, affect our identity and self-expression? Do you have any speculations about our future beings?
Rosana Antoli:
I have been blown away by the Metaverse and the philosophy that implies since ArtBizTech introduced me to it a year ago. For me the Metaverse it is a space of freedom of movements, new identities and relations, that definitely we need to explore and inhabit.
We are entering a more immersive world with web3. What do you think will be the biggest change in our digital experience?
Jing Yi Teo:
This is less of a forecast than a hope: increased literacy of value flows. This means financial literacy, to technological literacy, to ecological literacy. With web3, as value becomes more embedded and explicit with action, I hope we develop a broader and deeper awareness as a collective society with regards to where and to which stakeholders value flows, and thus make better, more sensible and conscious decisions as a result.
Together, we ran an interdisiplinary project called InAlt ID.
[InAlt ID is the result of a collaborative endeavour between Antolí, ArtBizTech and UXservices to integrate actionable principles of horizontality, participation and experience into UXservices’ renewed brand identity.
In 2021, while metaverses propagated and expanded to host much of our lives, Antoli and ArtBizTech conducted a series of consultations and workshops with UXservices where gestures served as the instrument to nurture inclusive, beyond-human-centric values for future UX practices.]
What possibilities was the InAlt ID project launched to explore/reveal?
Rosana Antoli:
InAlt ID pushes the boundaries of identity representation through pioneer gesture tracking technology. We blurred the limits of our corporal inherited information and open a new visualization for our inner self expression.
Where does the name “InAlt ID” come from?
Jing Yi Teo:
We knew we wanted “ID” as a part of the project’s name, because we wanted it to feel like something you can carry with you, something that immediately feels like it represents you, just as you know your ID card is an important identifier of you as an individual.
Rosana Antoli:
Inner Alter Identity. The naming embraces in a very minimalistic approach the variable and changeable identities that we can have.
How would you describe the dimensions of the InAlt ID project? What makes InAlt ID interdisciplinary?
Rosana Antoli:
This is an interdisciplinary project because not only uses a wide spectrum of languages but also it is a project that is constructed and defined with the input of the user, thanks to some onboarding questions that will help us to construct their unique InAlt ID.
What kind of journey awaits the experiencers on InAlt ID?
Rosana Antoli:
InAlt ID is not only a powerful data collection of gestures, and human identity. InAlt ID is also a pioneer work regarding human representation in the Web3.
Rosana, what are the similarities and differences in the InAlt ID project with your other art practices?
Rosana Antoli:
This project has been a challenge since we started working with it. But that is exactly like my art practice. If we don’t aim for risk and innovation nothing new and unexpected will come. Also for me it has been the first time that I embrace digital materialization and that is a totally new way of doing.
What are the future plans for InAlt ID?
Jing Yi Teo:
We plan to implement the project in its full extent by situating it both conceptually and technically in Web3. To stay in the loop, join our Discord and keep a lookout in the #💙inalt-id channel!
[This interview was held within the scope of UXistanbul 2022.]
