Paul Sermon
Encyclopedia
Paul Sermon was born 23 March 1966, in Oxford
, England
. Since June 2000 he has worked as the Professor of Creative Technologies in the Research Centre for Art and Design at the University of Salford
, Manchester
.
, he began to gain an interest and involve himself in Telematic art
work. It was at Gwent College that he was first introduced to the possible ways that telecommunication networks and computer systems could be combined to create what became known as Telematic art.
Sermon then went on to receive a Post Graduate Degree in Fine Art at the University of Reading
, specialising in Reading's history in art and computers. His final project for this degree was entitled "Think About the People Now". The piece incorporated hyper-media technology and computer based interactive narrative that explored a one man protest that happened at the 1990 remembrance ceremony in London
. The piece received a distinction and later that year, the Golden Nica Award from 1991's Prix Ars Electronica
in Linz
, Austria
.
After this, in the spring of 1992, he was then invited to Helsinki
to reproduce it as part of the Finnish MUU Media festival. He returned to Finland to make Telematic work for the Finnish Summer Exhibition at Kajaani Art Gallery in North Finland. This was where he created "Telematic Dreaming", which became the first of many internationally celebrated teleprescence based installations over the next ten years. Using live video images and projections, "Telematic Dreaming" was shown in over twenty venues around the world and became known as a seminal piece of interactive, Telematic art. It won a Sparky Award at the Los Angeles Interactive Media Festival in 1995 and is permanently on show in the Wild Worlds Gallery at the Bradford Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Yorkshire
, England
.
Shortly afterwards, Sermon was invited to work as an Artist in Residence at the ZKM Centre of Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe
, Germany
and this was where he created "Telematic Vision" for the ZKM MultiMediale Festival in November 1994. This piece is also continually shown worldwide including shows at the Millennium Dome
in London
, The San Francisco Art Institute
and the ICC InterCommunication Centre in Tokyo
, Japan
.
Whilst still in Germany, Sermon took up an Associate Professorship in Interactive Media Art at the MGB Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig
. Here he continued to produce more interactive installations such as 1996's "Telematic Encounter", a permanent gallery exhibition for the Ars Electronica Centre in Linz and the ZKM Media Museum in Karlsruhe called "The Tables Turned- A Telematic Scene on the Same Subject" in 1997, 1999's "A Body of Water" which was commissioned for "The Connected Cities" exhibition at the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg
, that went on to get a distinction from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2000, and 2000's "There's no Simulation Like Home" which was a large scale installation commissioned for the Fabrica Gallery in Brighton
by Brighton's Lighthouse Media Centre.
Between 1999 and 2000, Sermon worked as a guest professor for Performance and Environment at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria, before returning to England in 2000 where he has been since, working as the Professor of Creative Technology at Salford University in Manchester, working primarily in the field of researching into immersive and expanded Telematic environments.
, Paul Sermon started out as a part time lecturer for Art and Technology at the University of Reading, where he gained his postgraduate degree, as well as a part time lecturer for Telematic Arts at Gwent College of Higher Education between September 1989 and December 1992. He then took the role of Artist in residence at the Institute for Visual Media in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1993 and a Guest Professor at the University of Linz Austria between 1998 and 2001.
is the transmission of messages that are communicated over long distances. Sermon had a unique way of using videoconference techniques; he used this in his development of a series of celebrated Telematic art installations. His installations have received international acclaim and have been commented on by a number of his peers from the same field.
His research into telecommunications and his art installations have been widely exhibited throughout Europe
, United States
, East Asia
and Australia
. He has received multiple awards including:
• The first prize at the Interactive Media Festival Sparky Awards in Los Angeles 1994
• Prix Arts Electronic Golden Nica Award in Linz 1991 and runner up in 1993 and 2000
• Nominations for the World Technology Awards in San Francisco and the ZKM International Media Art Prize 2000 in Karlsruhe.
form the centre of Robotics and Automation. From recruiting these people into the group, they started to receive funding from the Arts Council of England. The funding went towards the Symposium and Artists in Residence Programme. The project worked in collaboration with his team colleague David Roberts and the Leverhulme Trust
, which funded the Artists in Residence programme. More collaboration come from the Creative Technology Research group, including research community and collaborative post graduate training scheme, in collaboration with the MMU and the AHRC funded REACT (Research Engine for Art and Creative Technology).
Sermon began to develop interactive installations. His main aim was to create an intimate set up, that would communicate over a distance and to develop open systems so other people would be able to participate in what he called the “greatest possible scope”. In his next project he created “Telematic Vision” which involved two structures that are identical, but in two locations that are as far away from each other as wised and they are both connected by telephone. The structures consisted of two blue sofas, with a large monitor opposite and a smaller one on each side of the sofa. Video camera
s were set up to record the events and the images that are filmed are sent to a video mixer, they were then mixed together and transmitted on to the large monitor screen. Once the video was transmitted, images from live television programmes were played in the background. Person A and Person B would then sit on the sofa both being in different locations, when they would look at the large television monitor they would see themselves sitting next to each other with the television programme image in the background. This is what he called an “Outer Body Experience”. The two people were able to interact with each other through mime and gesture and they find themselves in a virtual space situation even though they have distance between them. He used the sofas and television to provoke the everyday situation, of passive Television consumers. The people sitting on the sofas immediately become performers, to the general public who are sat around them.
and supported by Telecom Finland in 1992. The Installation was also performed at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung
July 2- August 24, 2005, were it was part of a seven interactive installation piece. This was Paul Sermons installation that became a major reworking, of a previous project he had been working on. Through the reworking of this project, it was developed and site specifically researched to create a video that contained the creation of interactive video sequences, with post production that took place in Taichung.
The theme and title of the piece came from Jean Baudrillard
`s essay “The Ecstasy of Communication” that talks about the notion of “home”. To describe his installation Sermon looked at another one of Baudrillard’s essays, and found the starting point of Telematic Dreaming. The installation existed within the digital telephone network of the ISDN. Two separate interfaces were created and put into two separate locations, were they function as customized video conference systems. In the two locations two double beds are placed, one in an illuminated space and one in a dark space. The bed that is in the illuminated space, has a camera directly placed above and records person A and the bed which is then sent as an image, to a projector that is directly placed above the second bed in the dark location. The live image is projected down onto the bed with Person B also in the image. Another camera located at the side of the projector screen, this camera sends a live image of the projection of Person A along with person B who is also in the image, to a variety of monitors that are located in the illuminated area and around the bed. This image that is created is called a “telepresent” image, what is presented on the monitor is a mirror, which reflects a person within another person’s reflection. Sermons installation plays with ambiguous connotations, which represent a telepresent projection surface that appears on a bed. In the complete ISDN installation, psychological complexity is derived from the main object (the bed) and is then dissolved in to the technology and geographical distance that is involved in the making of the installation. He wanted the user to feel the sense of existing outside of they own space, whilst around them a sense of touch is created that is very real and this is enhanced with the use of the bed and the senses beginning to shift in the Telematic space. The user is within a Telematic body and within this body it is controlled by a voyeurism
of itself. When the body is caused to interact in the installation, the effects of this determines the time and space of the body and this can be extended through the ISDN network the body can then travel at the speed of light
. Within Telematic Dreaming the user can exchange their tactical senses and swap their sense of touch, with the sense of sight by replacing their hands with their eyes.
and developed by Healthcare strategists from the group Rawlinson Kelly Whittlestone. The hospital proclaimed the project as the “UKs foremost and innovative NHS projects. The Teleporter Zone was created for children, to interact and perform in a virtual environment, whilst at the same time it would distract them and their families from the stress and worry that is caused from being in hospital. A wall was made in an S shaped curve, were two children would sit on each side and not be able to see each other. Video monitors were placed around the wall, and they displayed both patients sitting next to each other but an animated background that was created by a computer. Once this image was created and displayed on the screen, it encouraged and triggered the communication of the participants, and it relocated the children within new and exciting “telepresent environments” i.e. a doll's house or an aeroplane. This installation allowed the patients to be transported from the hospital to a different location, which is what Paul Sermon wanted to create to help children take their mind of being in hospital and to let them interact in a different environment. This was his first telematic installation that was specifically designed for children in hospital.
. It aims to establish an exchange between artists from Taiwan who are associated with contemporary arts practice.
Upon receiving the award, Sermon had no plans about what he would produce before the three month residency and took a "blank canvas" approach in order to respond to his environment and assume an action research based method in developing the work. The process was documented as part of the AHRC Performing Presence project (http://prescence.stanford.edu:3455/collaboratory/500) that was led by Professor Nick Kaye, from the University of Exeter
.
What came about was "Headroom". It was exhibited at the Xinyi Public Assembly Hall in Taipei
in March to May, 2006. A juxtaposition of Sermon's experiences in Taipei, between the way people live and the way people escape, it compares the solitude of a bedroom space with the teleprescence of the internet "space". It also refers to Sermon's former lecturer, and great influence, Professor Roy Ascott
`s essay, "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?” written in 1990, where Ascott talks about whether technology would ever dehumanise the arts, this being a huge concern for artists and art critics alike when it was written. It asked whether if Telematic Art had the potential to embody love, would it not make sense for art to be electronic and at the same time serve human principles? Headroom is also very reminiscent of Nam June Paik
's early Buddha television installations as it has been described as a "reflection of the self within the telepresent space, as both the viewer and the performer of this intimate encounter". (artsvillage.org). The television screen turns into a stage or portal between causes and effects that happen in the minds of the viewers.
Since 2001, Sermon has produced eleven new gallery installations and shown both new and old artworks of his in such venues as The Museum for Communication in 2002, Worcester City Art Gallery in 2003, New York's Eyebeam Gallery and The John Curtin Gallery in Perth, Australia
in 2004, and Taiwan's Museum of Fine Art, Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry and the Evelina Children's Hospital, London in 2005. As well as practical installations presenting his research, it has also been written about in several book chapters, most recently in "New Media Art- Practice and Context in the UK, 1994-2004" (2004), Edited by Lucy Kimbell, in the section "What Happens if We do This?" as well as writing chapters in "Networked Narrative Envrionments" edited by Andrea Zapp and " Dance and Technology" by Alexander Verlag. He has also written journal publications and reviews including "The Teleporter Zone- Interactive media arts in the healthcare context" (2007), a peer reviewed journal article in Leonardo.
from many different funding organisations, competitive bidding for artist’s commissions, research grants and awards. These include £39,000 from the Arts Council, England and the National Lottery Fund, which gave him £40,000. In total, Sermon has received around £1.3 million from funding over the years.
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Since June 2000 he has worked as the Professor of Creative Technologies in the Research Centre for Art and Design at the University of Salford
University of Salford
The University of Salford is a campus university based in Salford, Greater Manchester, England with approximately 20,000 registered students. The main campus is about west of Manchester city centre, on the A6, opposite the former home of the physicist, James Prescott Joule and the Working Class...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
.
Biography
Paul Sylvester Sermon was born in Oxford, England in 1966. Studying for a B.A Hon's Fine Art Degree in the Newport School of Fine Art at the Gwent College of Higher Education, under Professor Roy AscottRoy Ascott
Roy Ascott is a British artist and theorist, who works with cybernetics and telematics. He is President of the Planetary Collegium.- Biography :...
, he began to gain an interest and involve himself in Telematic art
Telematic art
Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic...
work. It was at Gwent College that he was first introduced to the possible ways that telecommunication networks and computer systems could be combined to create what became known as Telematic art.
Sermon then went on to receive a Post Graduate Degree in Fine Art at the University of Reading
University of Reading
The University of Reading is a university in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The University was established in 1892 as University College, Reading and received its Royal Charter in 1926. It is based on several campuses in, and around, the town of Reading.The University has a long tradition...
, specialising in Reading's history in art and computers. His final project for this degree was entitled "Think About the People Now". The piece incorporated hyper-media technology and computer based interactive narrative that explored a one man protest that happened at the 1990 remembrance ceremony in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The piece received a distinction and later that year, the Golden Nica Award from 1991's Prix Ars Electronica
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
.
After this, in the spring of 1992, he was then invited to Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
to reproduce it as part of the Finnish MUU Media festival. He returned to Finland to make Telematic work for the Finnish Summer Exhibition at Kajaani Art Gallery in North Finland. This was where he created "Telematic Dreaming", which became the first of many internationally celebrated teleprescence based installations over the next ten years. Using live video images and projections, "Telematic Dreaming" was shown in over twenty venues around the world and became known as a seminal piece of interactive, Telematic art. It won a Sparky Award at the Los Angeles Interactive Media Festival in 1995 and is permanently on show in the Wild Worlds Gallery at the Bradford Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Shortly afterwards, Sermon was invited to work as an Artist in Residence at the ZKM Centre of Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and this was where he created "Telematic Vision" for the ZKM MultiMediale Festival in November 1994. This piece is also continually shown worldwide including shows at the Millennium Dome
Millennium Dome
The Millennium Dome, colloquially referred to simply as The Dome or even The O2 Arena, is the original name of a large dome-shaped building, originally used to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, The San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
and the ICC InterCommunication Centre in Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Whilst still in Germany, Sermon took up an Associate Professorship in Interactive Media Art at the MGB Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
. Here he continued to produce more interactive installations such as 1996's "Telematic Encounter", a permanent gallery exhibition for the Ars Electronica Centre in Linz and the ZKM Media Museum in Karlsruhe called "The Tables Turned- A Telematic Scene on the Same Subject" in 1997, 1999's "A Body of Water" which was commissioned for "The Connected Cities" exhibition at the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg
Duisburg
- History :A legend recorded by Johannes Aventinus holds that Duisburg, was built by the eponymous Tuisto, mythical progenitor of Germans, ca. 2395 BC...
, that went on to get a distinction from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2000, and 2000's "There's no Simulation Like Home" which was a large scale installation commissioned for the Fabrica Gallery in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
by Brighton's Lighthouse Media Centre.
Between 1999 and 2000, Sermon worked as a guest professor for Performance and Environment at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria, before returning to England in 2000 where he has been since, working as the Professor of Creative Technology at Salford University in Manchester, working primarily in the field of researching into immersive and expanded Telematic environments.
Previous Appointments
Although currently working as the Professor of Creative Technology at the University of SalfordUniversity of Salford
The University of Salford is a campus university based in Salford, Greater Manchester, England with approximately 20,000 registered students. The main campus is about west of Manchester city centre, on the A6, opposite the former home of the physicist, James Prescott Joule and the Working Class...
, Paul Sermon started out as a part time lecturer for Art and Technology at the University of Reading, where he gained his postgraduate degree, as well as a part time lecturer for Telematic Arts at Gwent College of Higher Education between September 1989 and December 1992. He then took the role of Artist in residence at the Institute for Visual Media in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1993 and a Guest Professor at the University of Linz Austria between 1998 and 2001.
Telecommunication
From the beginning of the 1990's Paul Sermons research became practise based, in his preferred field of Contemporary Media Arts which focused on the creative use of Telecommunication Technologies. TelecommunicationTelecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
is the transmission of messages that are communicated over long distances. Sermon had a unique way of using videoconference techniques; he used this in his development of a series of celebrated Telematic art installations. His installations have received international acclaim and have been commented on by a number of his peers from the same field.
His research into telecommunications and his art installations have been widely exhibited throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. He has received multiple awards including:
• The first prize at the Interactive Media Festival Sparky Awards in Los Angeles 1994
• Prix Arts Electronic Golden Nica Award in Linz 1991 and runner up in 1993 and 2000
• Nominations for the World Technology Awards in San Francisco and the ZKM International Media Art Prize 2000 in Karlsruhe.
Adelphi Research Institute
One of his main roles within the Adelphi Research Institute led him to become the leader of the Creative Technology Research Group. A group that is a practise based community, made up of seven colleagues from across the Media and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Fine Arts. Within the group they looked at visual arts, design, performance and critical theory backgrounds. They all shared a common interest in researching Creative Technology. While he was head of the group he mentored new research active staff and established staff. His mentoring also included people from such groups as Postgraduate research students, research assistants and artists in residences. During his membership in the Adelphi Research Institute, he developed links with the university and recruited members including, Andrew Hamilton from the Research centre for the built and human resources, David Roberts from the centre for virtual environments and Darwin CaldwellDarwin Caldwell
Professor Darwin Caldwell is a noted international researcher and academic in robotics who is currently Research Director at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, Italy...
form the centre of Robotics and Automation. From recruiting these people into the group, they started to receive funding from the Arts Council of England. The funding went towards the Symposium and Artists in Residence Programme. The project worked in collaboration with his team colleague David Roberts and the Leverhulme Trust
Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 under the will of the First Viscount Leverhulme, William Hesketh Lever, with the instruction that its resources should be used to support "scholarships for the purposes of research and education."...
, which funded the Artists in Residence programme. More collaboration come from the Creative Technology Research group, including research community and collaborative post graduate training scheme, in collaboration with the MMU and the AHRC funded REACT (Research Engine for Art and Creative Technology).
Telematic Vision
While he was still a studentStudent
A student is a learner, or someone who attends an educational institution. In some nations, the English term is reserved for those who attend university, while a schoolchild under the age of eighteen is called a pupil in English...
Sermon began to develop interactive installations. His main aim was to create an intimate set up, that would communicate over a distance and to develop open systems so other people would be able to participate in what he called the “greatest possible scope”. In his next project he created “Telematic Vision” which involved two structures that are identical, but in two locations that are as far away from each other as wised and they are both connected by telephone. The structures consisted of two blue sofas, with a large monitor opposite and a smaller one on each side of the sofa. Video camera
Video camera
A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...
s were set up to record the events and the images that are filmed are sent to a video mixer, they were then mixed together and transmitted on to the large monitor screen. Once the video was transmitted, images from live television programmes were played in the background. Person A and Person B would then sit on the sofa both being in different locations, when they would look at the large television monitor they would see themselves sitting next to each other with the television programme image in the background. This is what he called an “Outer Body Experience”. The two people were able to interact with each other through mime and gesture and they find themselves in a virtual space situation even though they have distance between them. He used the sofas and television to provoke the everyday situation, of passive Television consumers. The people sitting on the sofas immediately become performers, to the general public who are sat around them.
Telematic Dreaming
Telematic Dreaming was originally created as a commission for the exhibition that is held every summer by the Finnish Ministry of Culture in KajaaniKajaani
Kajaani is a town and municipality in Finland.It is the capital of the Kainuu region. It is located southeast of Oulujärvi , which drains to the Gulf of Bothnia along the Oulujoki . There are inhabitants and city surface area is of which is water. The population density is . The town is...
and supported by Telecom Finland in 1992. The Installation was also performed at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung
Taichung
-Demographics:Taichung’s population was an estimated 1,040,725 in August 2006. There are slightly more females in the city than males.24.32% of residents are children, while 16.63% are young people, 52.68% are middle-age, and 6.73% are elderly....
July 2- August 24, 2005, were it was part of a seven interactive installation piece. This was Paul Sermons installation that became a major reworking, of a previous project he had been working on. Through the reworking of this project, it was developed and site specifically researched to create a video that contained the creation of interactive video sequences, with post production that took place in Taichung.
The theme and title of the piece came from Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
`s essay “The Ecstasy of Communication” that talks about the notion of “home”. To describe his installation Sermon looked at another one of Baudrillard’s essays, and found the starting point of Telematic Dreaming. The installation existed within the digital telephone network of the ISDN. Two separate interfaces were created and put into two separate locations, were they function as customized video conference systems. In the two locations two double beds are placed, one in an illuminated space and one in a dark space. The bed that is in the illuminated space, has a camera directly placed above and records person A and the bed which is then sent as an image, to a projector that is directly placed above the second bed in the dark location. The live image is projected down onto the bed with Person B also in the image. Another camera located at the side of the projector screen, this camera sends a live image of the projection of Person A along with person B who is also in the image, to a variety of monitors that are located in the illuminated area and around the bed. This image that is created is called a “telepresent” image, what is presented on the monitor is a mirror, which reflects a person within another person’s reflection. Sermons installation plays with ambiguous connotations, which represent a telepresent projection surface that appears on a bed. In the complete ISDN installation, psychological complexity is derived from the main object (the bed) and is then dissolved in to the technology and geographical distance that is involved in the making of the installation. He wanted the user to feel the sense of existing outside of they own space, whilst around them a sense of touch is created that is very real and this is enhanced with the use of the bed and the senses beginning to shift in the Telematic space. The user is within a Telematic body and within this body it is controlled by a voyeurism
Voyeurism
In clinical psychology, voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature....
of itself. When the body is caused to interact in the installation, the effects of this determines the time and space of the body and this can be extended through the ISDN network the body can then travel at the speed of light
Speed of light
The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time...
. Within Telematic Dreaming the user can exchange their tactical senses and swap their sense of touch, with the sense of sight by replacing their hands with their eyes.
The Teleporter Zone
The Teleporter Zone was one of the five artworks that were permanently incorporated, in the outpatients waiting area in Evelina Children’s Hospital at St. Thomas in London which opened in October 2005. The piece was designed by Hopkins ArchitectsHopkins Architects
Hopkins Architects Partnership LLP is a prominent British architectural firm established in 1976 by Sir Michael and Lady Patricia Hopkins. The practice has won many awards for its work and has twice been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, including in 2011 for the 2012 London Velodrome and in...
and developed by Healthcare strategists from the group Rawlinson Kelly Whittlestone. The hospital proclaimed the project as the “UKs foremost and innovative NHS projects. The Teleporter Zone was created for children, to interact and perform in a virtual environment, whilst at the same time it would distract them and their families from the stress and worry that is caused from being in hospital. A wall was made in an S shaped curve, were two children would sit on each side and not be able to see each other. Video monitors were placed around the wall, and they displayed both patients sitting next to each other but an animated background that was created by a computer. Once this image was created and displayed on the screen, it encouraged and triggered the communication of the participants, and it relocated the children within new and exciting “telepresent environments” i.e. a doll's house or an aeroplane. This installation allowed the patients to be transported from the hospital to a different location, which is what Paul Sermon wanted to create to help children take their mind of being in hospital and to let them interact in a different environment. This was his first telematic installation that was specifically designed for children in hospital.
Headroom
In 2006 Paul Sermon was awarded the Taiwan Visiting Arts Fellowship award, a joint initiative programme between Visiting Arts, the Council for Cultural Affairs Taiwan, British Council Taiwan and Arts Council EnglandArts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...
. It aims to establish an exchange between artists from Taiwan who are associated with contemporary arts practice.
Upon receiving the award, Sermon had no plans about what he would produce before the three month residency and took a "blank canvas" approach in order to respond to his environment and assume an action research based method in developing the work. The process was documented as part of the AHRC Performing Presence project (http://prescence.stanford.edu:3455/collaboratory/500) that was led by Professor Nick Kaye, from the University of Exeter
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....
.
What came about was "Headroom". It was exhibited at the Xinyi Public Assembly Hall in Taipei
Taipei
Taipei City is the capital of the Republic of China and the central city of the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Situated at the northern tip of the island, Taipei is located on the Tamsui River, and is about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...
in March to May, 2006. A juxtaposition of Sermon's experiences in Taipei, between the way people live and the way people escape, it compares the solitude of a bedroom space with the teleprescence of the internet "space". It also refers to Sermon's former lecturer, and great influence, Professor Roy Ascott
Roy Ascott
Roy Ascott is a British artist and theorist, who works with cybernetics and telematics. He is President of the Planetary Collegium.- Biography :...
`s essay, "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?” written in 1990, where Ascott talks about whether technology would ever dehumanise the arts, this being a huge concern for artists and art critics alike when it was written. It asked whether if Telematic Art had the potential to embody love, would it not make sense for art to be electronic and at the same time serve human principles? Headroom is also very reminiscent of Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
's early Buddha television installations as it has been described as a "reflection of the self within the telepresent space, as both the viewer and the performer of this intimate encounter". (artsvillage.org). The television screen turns into a stage or portal between causes and effects that happen in the minds of the viewers.
Research Output
Paul Sermon's research output is usually practical gallery exhibited artworks and installations, often then contextualised by the gallery's own exhibition catalogues, reviews, conference papers and articles found in journals. With ongoing research funding income from grants and acquisitions, Sermon has been able to carry on producing, showing and discussing his work internationally.Since 2001, Sermon has produced eleven new gallery installations and shown both new and old artworks of his in such venues as The Museum for Communication in 2002, Worcester City Art Gallery in 2003, New York's Eyebeam Gallery and The John Curtin Gallery in Perth, Australia
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
in 2004, and Taiwan's Museum of Fine Art, Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry and the Evelina Children's Hospital, London in 2005. As well as practical installations presenting his research, it has also been written about in several book chapters, most recently in "New Media Art- Practice and Context in the UK, 1994-2004" (2004), Edited by Lucy Kimbell, in the section "What Happens if We do This?" as well as writing chapters in "Networked Narrative Envrionments" edited by Andrea Zapp and " Dance and Technology" by Alexander Verlag. He has also written journal publications and reviews including "The Teleporter Zone- Interactive media arts in the healthcare context" (2007), a peer reviewed journal article in Leonardo.
Research Funding
Since 2001, Paul Sermon has received a consistent amount of research fundingResearch funding
Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of both "hard" science and technology and social science. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most...
from many different funding organisations, competitive bidding for artist’s commissions, research grants and awards. These include £39,000 from the Arts Council, England and the National Lottery Fund, which gave him £40,000. In total, Sermon has received around £1.3 million from funding over the years.