Department of Information and Media Studies

The metaphor of plasma is taken up to present and discuss movement and engagement by participants in mixed reality installation arts. Two works involving full body video portraits exhibited through large plasma screens in a variety of public settings are covered. Machinic mediations of video realism are considered in terms of embodied interaction in which viewer-participants contribute to the ‘disquiet’ of gendered figuring. Processural, proximal and personal aspects of responsive engagement are discussed. This is extended to performativity that may lead us to critical reflection of our own actions and responses in mixed reality arts.

Phototherapy claims that photographs can open up an exploration of us and others and, when the participant has primary agency, the affective force of the photograph is powerful and insightful. In the project "A Hand-Crafted Web of Personal Remembrance" we have been developing a workshop model and tools for using vernacular photographs as a therapeutic tool. The workshop has been conducted as an artistic project – what Weiser would categorize as therapeutic photography, i.e. a photographic practice done by people themselves (or their helpers) – rather than a therapeutic practice requiring the skills of a trained therapist or counselor. As artists, we have been interested in examining the mnemonic function of photographs, and how a physical manifestation and handling of the photos, the touch, could add a more physically embracing experience.

Discovered during a media-archaeological investigation into optical illusions, trick photography and discarded memorabilia, the photo-multigraph technique opened the door to an enchanted world of cloned appearances orbiting in a self-reflective solar system. Shapeshifting into our preferred artistic medium, this turn-of-the-century photographic technique becomes the video-multigraph.

It is bizarrely noteworthy that self-isolation would become not only the subject of the piece, but also—due to the unforeseen spread of a recently mutated virus—the prevailing circumstances under which the work was to be completed.

In Verfünfungseffekt, we use the medium of video to create a kaleidoscopic portrait-in-motion where the perspective-shifting shards of ego are recorded in a synchronized performance of solipsist intersubjectivity. The video-multigraph allows for the compositing of tiny offsets in time-shifting delays applied to one, or several, of the mirrored selves—shattering the cloned perfection, as well as the conformity, of the multiple presences. This optical illusion necessitates reflection on how media alters our perceptions of time and space; it thereby arouses wonder about our place in existence.

Discovered during a media-archeological investigation into optical illusions, trick photography, and discarded memorabilia, the photo-multigraph technique opened the door to an enchanted world of cloned appearances orbiting in a self-reflective solar system. Shapeshifting into our preferred artistic medium, this turn-of-the-century photographic technique becomes the video-multigraph. It is bizarrely noteworthy that self-isolation would become not only the subject of the piece, but also – due to the unforeseen spread of a recently mutated virus – the prevailing circumstances under which the work was to be completed. In Verfünfungseffekt, we use the medium of video to create a kaleidoscopic portrait-in-motion where the perspective-shifting shards of ego are recorded in a synchronized performance of solipsist intersubjectivity. The video-multigraph allows for the compositing of tiny offsets in time-shifting delays applied to one, or several, of the mirrored selves – shattering the clon...

This article takes up the concept of performativity prevalent in the humanities and applies it to the design of installation arts in mixed reality mode. Based on the design, development and public access to two specific works, the concept is related to a form of research by design. We argue that the concept of performativity may be further usefully employed in investigations (design and research, artistic and public) into digital arts where complex intersections between concepts, technologies, dramaturgy, media and participant actions are in flux and together constitute the emergence and experience of a work. Theories of performativity are related to these two works in an argument that further suggests there is room in research by design to also include ‘performative design’. The article is the result of a wide-ranging interdisciplinary collaboration and aims to convey some sense of that in its reporting style, content and analysis.

This article examines a 5-year collaboration between the Stockholm-based video artists Performing Pictures and Talleres Comunitarios, a studio based in the Oaxacan town of Santa Ana Zegache where local artisans employ traditional skills in the restoration of religious artifacts. In images and text, we trace the exchange of skills, knowledge, and aesthetic sensibility that took place as these two groups of artists collaborated in producing a series of video animations of venerative objects, against a backdrop of religious, social, and political tensions that characterize everyday life in Zegache. In the article and the accompanying series of three short films, ''Wonder & Veneration 1Á3'' (http://vimeo. com/album/2682070), we examine how the artists negotiate questions of aesthetics and religious belief as their collaboration unfolds within the context of the Zegache community, where the Talleres contribute skills of carpentry and painting, while Performing Pictures provides skills of film, animation and microelectronics. The processes and practices involved in creating three works provides the framework for this examination: the first, an animation of the Virgin of Guadalupe as she appears to a simple peasant, and the second, produced 2 years later, an animation of Santa Ana, local patron saint and mother of Maria, as she teaches her daughter to read the scriptures. Whereas both figures are central to the syncretic religious belief of southern Mexico with its challenge to the entrenched authority of the hispanicized clergy, the local figure of Santa Ana carries even more complex meanings for the community of Zegache. These meanings are embodied in the third work we examine, a small solarpowered chapel that the artists built to display the Santa Ana animation. With the mayor's support and located at the entrance to the town, the chapel embodies a shift of power away from the church, standing as an example of indigenous empowerment in civil society.

This article examines a 5-year collaboration between the Stockholm-based video artists Performing Pictures and Talleres Comunitarios, a studio based in the Oaxacan town of Santa Ana Zegache where local artisans employ traditional skills in the restoration of religious artifacts. In images and text, we trace the exchange of skills, knowledge, and aesthetic sensibility that took place as these two groups of artists collaborated in producing a series of video animations of venerative objects, against a backdrop of religious, social, and political tensions that characterize everyday life in Zegache. In the article and the accompanying series of three short films, ''Wonder & Veneration 1Á3'' (http://vimeo. com/album/2682070), we examine how the artists negotiate questions of aesthetics and religious belief as their collaboration unfolds within the context of the Zegache community, where the Talleres contribute skills of carpentry and painting, while Performing Pictures provides skills of film, animation and microelectronics. The processes and practices involved in creating three works provides the framework for this examination: the first, an animation of the Virgin of Guadalupe as she appears to a simple peasant, and the second, produced 2 years later, an animation of Santa Ana, local patron saint and mother of Maria, as she teaches her daughter to read the scriptures. Whereas both figures are central to the syncretic religious belief of southern Mexico with its challenge to the entrenched authority of the hispanicized clergy, the local figure of Santa Ana carries even more complex meanings for the community of Zegache. These meanings are embodied in the third work we examine, a small solarpowered chapel that the artists built to display the Santa Ana animation. With the mayor's support and located at the entrance to the town, the chapel embodies a shift of power away from the church, standing as an example of indigenous empowerment in civil society.

The article highlights the paradox in the language, logic, and values of the larger social system vis-à-vis the market economy system. It observes that the language, logic, and values of co-operation have gradually undergone transformation over time and have been mainstreamed today to that of industrial production and organizations in a competitive market economic system. The article argues that the confusions and tensions today in the theory, practice, and policy for recreating sustainable systems essentially arise out of a lack of conceptual clarity and an inability to distinguish the values, logic, and language of competition from that of co-operation. Based on an action research project during 2008-2013 on developing transitional strategies for rebuilding a sustainable community system from within the existing competitive market economy system, the paper provides a way forward for restructuring the organizational design and institutional architecture on the principles of deep relationships, trust, and co-operation for long-term sustainability.