Intimacy Across the Internet Project

This video documents some impressions on intimacy from an across the internet collaboration with my professor and HyeWon, a dance student in California.  Here's another recap of our method for generating material and collecting footage:

1) We discussed intimacy themes--shared emails, images, and movies that  helped us better define and understand the meaning of intimacy (2-3 weeks).

2) Dr. Gilbert composed music that dealt with the themes of intimacy and sent it to HyeWon and I to listen to and absorb.

3) I reacted to the musical compositions by recording some variations on piano then manipulating them digitally with Audacity.

4) We all connected via Skype video chat (HyeWon in California on one end----Dr. Gilbert and I on the other end).

5) HyeWon performed a dance in CA picked up by her built-in iSight webcam, while we recorded that live performance in NYC by pointing an external digital video camera at our computer screen (2 mins).

6) I performed a dance that responded to HyeWon's material that was recorded by two cameras:  one by Dr. Gilbert, the other through the computer to computer Skype video chat that HyeWon pointed her external digital camera at in CA to record her computer screen (2 mins).

We tried to achieve an intimate connection with several barriers and filters between us:  we were on a not-so-steady wireless internet connection that distorted and pixilated our images, we recording the dance events through two filters (the video camera) and the (computer screen), we could not hear each other speaking if we were far away from the computer, HyeWon and I had never met and we talked very little about this project, the musical influence on the dance came from our memory of Gilbert's theme because we did not play with it on site, and of course, there was the actual distance or space and time between us.

I was really excited to see the resulting footage that HyeWon recorded of us in NY from CA.  What was recorded seemed like a completely different world.  The distortions altered the colors and the feel of the performance space at NYU's Pless Hall completely--it made the colors cooler and less industrial.  I wonder how the bright, open, and beautiful outdoor space in CA that Dr. Gilbert and I saw and interpreted differed from HyeWon's reality... 

I thought it was important to exaggerate the distance and distortion between us when putting together this iMovie document of our collaboration.  With the idea of intimacy so completely abstracted by how we set up this project, I felt that the search for intimacy was ultimately a journey and choice made by the other, the observer, the watcher, the recorder, or the interpreter.  I think I also learned a lot about how media and means dictate the process and product of an artistic project like this...how technology can take on a life of its own and work as an equally valid and important collaborative voice.