Elizabeth Leister
I am interested in how technology can facilitate a simultaneous absence and presence, a private and public moment, a real and a virtual body within one space and time. Through technology, the clearly defined borders between spaces, bodies and relationships are blurred.
By immersing the audience in installations of video, performance, mirrors and sound, I pose the question, what does it mean to be a body in a virtual space? Through computer generated images and audio, I question our relationship with technology and the proximity and distance that it creates as it becomes an extension of our physical, emotional and psychological selves.
Recently, in the process of editing video, I realized that I was spending more time interacting with my computer than any one person in my life. I imagined this connection with my machine as a “real”, perhaps even romantic relationship. There were similar desires for connection, moments of magic, frustrating communication breakdowns, and disappointments. The result of these musings is a series of video projects, collectively titled, “Romantech Machine”, primarily composed of the imagery and sound generated directly from my Macintosh Power Book G4. Visual comparisons are drawn between the inner workings of the machine and a body. For instance, the slowly pulsing power button of a computer in sleep mode appears to be breathing with life. An internal dialogue is spoken by the computer and suggests a romantic relationship. However, whether the relationship described is with a machine or a human remains elusive.
In my latest three-channel video installation titled, ”Every Body is Everywhere and Nowhere”, my concern has shifted from the psychological to the physical. The real body and the virtual body inhabit one space and time. I perform a daily drawing tracing the contours of my body in front of a web-cam. My body travels in real (LA) time through cyber space to be projected as a virtual body into the gallery space in Philadelphia. An animated drawing of a body moving through space builds up and erases on a second projection. Like the drawing in the performance, the contour of the body is defined and disappears.
A third video projects a collage of the body leaving a physical trace – a footprint in the sand, a finger print on a cold window, an empty bed, for example. The materiality and texture of the real body are illustrated in contrast to my web-cam projected body made up of light and pixels. A computerized voice expresses a desire to be everywhere and nowhere, everyone and no one. A second audio track, taken from my writings, includes a human voice whispering descriptions as if she were light and breath.
Mirrors reflect the projected images and insert the body of the viewer directly into the project. The audience body is active and is integral to the meaning of the work since it is the only physical body in this installation that explores corporeality and immateriality. Borders between bodies, spaces and time dematerialize to question our notions of physicality in an increasingly virtual world.
