From within

Roar Sletteland on being part of For one – for many – for all 

Contribution to Thorolf Thuestad: Emotional Machines: Composing for Unstable Media

I had two roles in this project: one discursive and one technical. In the early stages of the research, I was summoned as a conversation partner, to address certain issues: anthropomorphism, art, animate and inanimate objects and such. During our discussions, we may or may not have developed a better understanding of the things Thorolf wanted to explore. It is hard to tell. It was fun, anyway.

Toward the end of the period, I was invited to assemble some of the mechanical devices that Thorolf had developed during his fellowship, create viable technical solutions, make sure the large number of cables, power supplies, motors, controller units, batteries, all were designed and connected in a safe and stable way, if not to make the objects come alive, at least to make sure they would stay alive during the critical phases of their existence, that is, during the time they were presented for an audience. The laborious and time consuming task of making things work, however important, all the same quotidian and repetitive.

Seemingly, my involvement would follow a traditional dividing line, between theory and practice, talking and doing, the work of the mind as opposed to the hand, the critic or academic as opposed to the artist, commenting as opposed to creating, with the slight deviation that I would jump from one side to the other during the process. However, the division was not so clear when looked at more closely. For one, discussing the project is part of the creative process, not just a comment on it. Soldering cables and scraping debris off mechanical parts, on the other hand, is in general not considered part of the artistic process. In fact, in most artistic work of a certain complexity, like stage work and film, there is a substantial number of people involved whose contribution isn’t mentioned or noticed, or considered relevant for the artistic output. Unlike, for instance, light designers, scenographers and performers, these people are often nameless and voiceless, interchangeable, non-expressive. Stage hands, tech staff, various types of managers and producers, working silently in the background, like cogs in a machinery. Which is something to be considered, perhaps, in a project that explicitly concerns the agency of machinery. These people are not involved in the artistic process as such, just accommodating it, handling it from a distance, so to speak.

In a sense, my technical contribution was more like that, myopically focusing on the electronics and the mechanics, not too concerned with the end result, or even the aesthetics involved. In fact, even the early conversations were quite general, circling around questions of epistemology, science and representation, belief and disbelief, art and language, and less about artistic choices. Unlike most of the crew involved, I wasn’t working towards the final performance and exhibition, but locally on each object, trying to make them as stable as possible. This position, in a way exempt from artistic responsibility while still committed to the stakes, I found very interesting – at the same time involved and detached, simultaneously working and observing.

I remember watching an interview with Sidney Pollack, who claimed that «directing is like sex. You never get to see how the others do it». His point was that since he also was an actor he could observe the other directors at work. The director in question was Stanley Kubrick, and the film was his final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut, a film obsessed with looking (and sex, incidentally), about secrets in plain sight, about the incongruence between language and image, where the words fall flat to the ground, followed by embarrassing silence – a film in which Pollack had a small, but significant part. The remark was probably not very serious, but the message is profound enough – that watching and doing are two very different activities, sometimes mutually exclusive, and never something that simply happens. In order to observe, one must be in a position to observe, and in order to do, one must be in another position.

Remember: the words theatre and theory have a common origin. They derive from the Greek theoros, which was the name given to a visitor, coming to observe the holy rituals. Coming from the outside, being on the outside, enabled him to behold the ritual as a spectacle unfolding before him. Hence theory, hence theatre. Observation requires distance and non-engagement. This distance, this position where theory can occur, is also the position of the audience. What position is this? Firstly, it is a privileged position, where the onlooker, standing on the outside, is able to pass judgement on whatever lies in front. It is the position from where one can state the truth about the object: “this is good”, “this is successful”, “this is art”. So it also requires an object, a spectacle, something to pass judgement on. Even if it is a superior position, the viewer is also dependent, in need of something to look at, and also locked to this specific relationship, like Ulysses tied to the mast. A limited power indeed.

And then, there is the fact that the audience is not really stating the truth about what is unfolding before them – rather, they are being tricked, seeing only what the artist wants them to see. Only after submitting to this ruse can they perform the judgement. A kind of agreement or pact between the work and the onlooker – suspension of disbelief is perhaps the right expression – where blots of paint become persons, sequences of images become narratives, people represent other people – and these strange, moving plastic things turn into unfathomable living beings. ‍I feel they have intentions, but know they do not have it. In order for the play of anthropomorphism to come into being, a specific relationship between work and viewer – a certain distance, a great deal of good faith – must be installed. Only then will these creatures come to life.

The funny thing is, that what makes these things appear human – to me, anyway – is their vulnerability, their faults and generally non-impressive behaviour, and the very real risk of failure. Sometimes some of them would become too impressive, too elegant, and then it becomes just a robot. Unlike human performers, these objects seem human when they don’t represent, when they are only themselves. When they are not trying to put up a show. Or, when they engage in social situations, interacting with each other or with humans. Then, a certain agency seems to appear.

What I found interesting, was that the real magic happened during the process of trying to make these objects work, not in the performances. The perpetual care they needed, the constant adjusting and tweaking, endless repairs and reboots, made their coming-to-life seem like a real struggle. Of course, it was mostly Thorolf’s struggle, but in some strange way, it seemed like they wanted it themselves.

Maybe it was because of the inherent teleology in these creatures: they had one goal, and the pleasure of seeing them reach it, created an illusion of will. Maybe it was being constantly on the critical dividing line between living and non-living, to watch them cross that line, back and forth, again and again. Or maybe it simply was the interaction, slowly getting to know them, their strength and weaknesses, seeing their personality gradually taking shape. Whereas the performance and the exhibition present something that is already achieved – the objects’ ability to move and interact. Of course, this movement would also be imperfect, human-like, including glitches and squeaks, but it would still be relatively controlled, like a well made representation of something not so well made.

In that sense, I felt that my own position was a privileged one. Like Sidney Pollack, I got to have it both ways, to see the project from the inside and the outside, to have the observer’s perspective on the process, while at the same time a part of that process. For that I remain grateful.

One day during the production process, a bird died in the large hall where we were working. Maybe it was dying already and sought a quiet place, or maybe it crashed into one of the many cables hanging from the ceiling. In any case, it died and I buried it under a bush outside the building. I’m not very knowledgeable about birds, but it was a tiny one – some kind of sparrow, I suppose. It had been flying around in the ceiling for a few hours, sometimes coming down. I thought it acted a bit strange – for instance, it didn’t seem afraid of me, just unwilling to go through the doors and windows that I opened. At some point it landed on the mat among the objects. It just sat there, looking confused. A few times, it walked a bit around, but most of the time it sat still. It seemed alive, and it was alive. And then it wasn’t.