Encoded Presence
[auto-portrait of E. Puente]
version for PDA
Composed by:
Michael Takeo Magruder [02.2005]
Assisted by:
Emma Puente [cinematography]
Patrick Simons [sound design]
Gratitude:
Patrick Lichty [discourse]
Jo-Anne Green + Helen Thorington [distribution]
Requirements:
PDA with Pocket PC 2003
color display @ ≥240x320 resolution
Flash
plugin for Pocket PC
Stereo Audio
Context:
The mobile phone has undergone an evolutionary progression from a limited and
mundane communication instrument to a multi-functional device augmented with
computer and photographic/video capabilities. Indicative of Weiser’s notion
of ubiquitous computing, this hybridised technological set continues to permeate
the entire social strata of the developed world and has achieved the distinction
of primary transmitter of our digital selves. Generating transitory and ephemeral
networks, the mobile phone mediates our most intimate of communications and
exchanges – at all times and in all places – and continues to erode
the actual and perceived divisions between public and private space.
Within this technological and sociological framework, there exists the potential
to implement this medium as a mechanism to explore, critique and expand the
conceptual and aesthetic structures within the classical genre of portraiture.
Embracing the functionality of the mobile phone as transmitter of the self,
can the inherent characteristics of these devices, ranging from their physical
recording limitations to their low-bandwidth data format and consequential compression
artefacting, become meaningful creative elements in a formalised artistic product?
Does the fusion of these device-level qualities with the innate algorithmic
processes afforded by the digital domain, affect the characterisation of the
studied ‘individual’ by re-defining fundamental aspects of the creative
process such as subject acquisition and artwork distribution?
Within this scenario, does such a portrait attain a greater or different ‘truthfulness’?
Process:
Without artistic direction/interference and utilising only a SVP c500 smartphone
as a recording instrument, a subject was requested to generate cinematic content
interpreting the notion of ‘auto-portrait’. From the resulting material
a single nine second audio/video stream was extracted and utilised as the exclusive
source material for the artwork.
Other Versions:
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