Jerome
grant
recipients
'99:
Kevin & Jennifer McCoy
Auriea Harvey
Vivian Selbo
Alexei Shulgin &
Natalie Bookchin
Community
This piece
is about, in general, community, and our individual roles within that
community. Specifically, this piece is presented within three particular
ideas.
First, the idea our society perpetuates that any bond outside of
the construct of either the first family we are born into, or the second
family that we create through marriage and childbirth must, and will,
always supersede those bonds of friendship and community. The segregation
of the 'nuclear family' from the extended kin and community forced women
to become more dependent on the individual man, and children to become
more dependent on the individual woman. This dependency created the much
used opportunity for the abuse of that power.
The second idea is the contemporary
agreement by the 'social capitalists' like Putnam and de Souza Briggs,
that the notion of 'community,' and its relevance to daily life has been
waning over the last half century. It is generally noted, but often downplayed,
that while the traditional models of community such as the church, recreational
clubs, the PTA, political parties, etc. have shown a steadily declining
membership count, new models of community, such as self-help groups, social
movements, and especially the Net, have flourished in membership ratios
as well as group counts.
The third idea, is that of a deeper understanding
of the difference between loneliness and solitude. It is a distinction
we all know to exist, but find difficulty in seeing it practiced in our
own lives. Without that understanding, community is nothing but a home
for codependency.
Ochen K. explains the tangible experience of
this piece through the metaphor of a party. Generally, a party does
not consist of everyone engaged in a single large conversation, but rather
many smaller conversations defined geographically. (Three people sitting
on a couch having one conversation, four people standing in the kitchen
having a different conversation.) Two limitations of this construct are:
Through this piece, those are no longer limitations, but rather the vehicles
of the communication itself. Imagine that while engaged in one of those
conversations at that party, when you stood up, you would be having that
same conversation within the context of your peer community. While sitting,
you would be having that conversation within the context of a small (perhaps
even two person) intimate gathering. And while lying down, that conversation
would be a conversation with yourself.
This is not a description of the
interaction of the piece, but rather an attempt to relate the emotional
concept of the experience.
The conversations comprising this piece would
be real-time conversations, but would not necessitate multiple users to
be present. When one user is present, he engages in a conversation with
himself, with the author (the artist) playing the role of their questioning mind.
When multiple users are present, they communicate with each other, with
the author (still the artist) as the questioning facilitator.
Much 'net
art' is situational. The artist provides a situation intentionally
devoid of projection, where users can define and then discover their own
messages. This is not intended to be so. Ochen K. has ideas
of community, and chooses to talk about those opinions through the
three specific ideas outlined above. This is by no means a chat room.
It's a mixing of a submersive interactive experience, with single and
multiple user's opinions and reactions defining the scope and direction.
Biography
Ochen K. has been spending a lot of time over the last few years fulfilling commissions for dance companies--mostly composing original music, live-mixing sound scapes, and/or live dancer-generated soundtracks (large-scale-electric-harp-esque things). Web-based art has generally been a personal outlet for him, currently manifesting itself in 4days where he creates a new small 'piece' every four days. The time spent thinking and creating each piece gives Ochen K. time to meditate on what is going on in his life, and gives those in his life a little different window.
Links
