Interview: Lisa Jevbratt An email interview, November 1998-February 1999
Steve Dietz:What is a Stillman
Project?
Lisa Jevbratt: A Stillman
Project is a parasitic art system that recognizes the Web as a public/conversational/living/smart space.
SD: How does a Stillman
Project differ from or resemble collaborative filtering on sites like
Amazon.com and Reel.com?
LJ: A Stillman
Project is an artwork. Its
intention/agenda with the use of collaborative information filtering is
thus different from that of sites where similar
technology is used as a marketing strategy.
Interestingly, the networked information
technologies being developed in the United States today lend
themselves perfectly to different kinds of collaborative filtering.
The implications of these technologies contradict the
mythology of the individual, which is
omnipresent in [modern] American society. We have to get used to the idea
of sharing information, and ideas about privacy have to be redefined.
In
SD: One of the obvious aspects of
collaborative filtering is that while it is an alternative means of navigation, it can also create a
kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in which the most-visited pages are ...
visited the most.
LJ: A good conversation on an interesting topic
hopefully influences the participants. It should make us change what we
believe in and what we want. We need to get used to interpreting this kind
of information and to adjusting our agendas in appropriate ways. Every day
we are in situations where we have to weigh information about what others
think and want with our own agendas and beliefs. These technologies
have more to do with consensus than with democracy or autocracy.
They might make us think and react in more similar ways. I don't think
there is necessarily any harm in that. It is again a question of the individual versus the collective, and the approach
to it is going to vary greatly even within the cultures
of the United States and Europe.
SD: At one point in the project you mentioned
that you had become very
committed to the Walker Web site being a "healthy
host." Can you talk a bit more about this?
LJ: The Web offers and begs for new ways of
discussing art. Thinking about art by playing with an Inviter/Host-Invitee/Guest-Noninvitee/Parasite
continuum seems more appropriate than describing different roles and
interpretations
along an author-reader continuum. When I work
on a project like this, the play between it being a parasite, a guest, and a
host is what makes it interesting in terms of
its ontological status as art. A
parasite wants its host to be functioning well so that it can be "carried"
and fed. A parasitic system also wants to understand its host
system in order to get the most out of it. Your system [the Walker's Web
site] is very convoluted. Now, when most technical problems are solved,
I like how that conceptually affects the Stillman Project.
SD: What do you mean by "guest" and
"noninvitee" on this continuum?
LJ: The guest, or invitee, is part of the
expected audience, which is given certain permissions in terms of access
and interpretation. There is an agreement set up between the inviter, or
host, and the invitee, and there
is an important element of trust in their relationship. The parasite, or
noninvitee, is not explicitly considered by the host to be a receiver, and
the host's information is thus not targeted to accommodate the parasite.
Taken to its simplistic extreme, the guest could be seen as a person
mingling/navigating a Web site, and the parasite as a hacker breaking
into the site.
SD: Your project refers to the characters in
the Paul Auster novel City of Glass. The character
Quinn, a private detective, "decodes" the apparently chaotic data of
Stillman's wanderings around New York by tracking them on a map of the
city. What are some of the strategies a Stillman Project participant can
use to better understand the mapping of information that is generated?
LJ: While the physical space of New York
City has been thoroughly mapped, there isn't just one way of mapping the
networked space of the Web. I see the collection and interpretation of the
data generated by people's navigation as an attempt to create the map that
could be used to decode that data; in other words, the map that is created
is the map that could be used to better understand the map that is created.
Maybe we have to use recursive reasoning to begin to grasp the concept
of networked space. (The importance of recursive loops for
computing cannot be overestimated.) To be more specific, I think
seeing clusters of pages forming and pondering the relationships among
those pages is an interesting way of using the map.
SD: Do you have a subject area or area of
expertise in C5? Does your work with the Stillman Projects relate at all?
SD: My experience in creating network systems
as art fits very well into C5's agenda. The projects we have been working
with so far have given me an opportunity to use and expand that
experience both conceptually and technically. Right now,
my main responsibility is creating
an http/IP database to be used in conjunction with other C5 endeavors,
like the 16 Sessions project for Walker Art Center.
SD: What is your background?
LJ: Before I came to the CADRE Institute at San Jose
State University for my MFA degree, I studied art in Sweden
for many years. The first schools [I attended] were very traditional,
teaching painting and sculpture from a high-late modernist platform.
After that I spent two years at the College of Art, Craft
and Design [Konstfack] studying industrial design. I thought that
environment would be more open-minded, but I was wrong and went back to
studying art. I [found] an art school [Malmoe School of Fine Arts-Forum]
with a much more contemporary and theoretical approach. There I started
to work with and exhibit computer-manipulated photography as a way of
examining shifts in representation brought on by computer technology.
Those investigations -- and a year of studies in philosophy at the Lund
University -- made me see the new problems in making representations of things/issues. It seemed like the
only way to do interesting art would be by working more directly with the
computer as a language machine, creating
systems that would embody, rather than represent, the implications of
computer technologies on culture. So I went to Silicon Valley.
The computers in the art program at San Jose State were a
very good match for what I wanted to do, and the professor there, Joel Slayton, was challenging in just the right way.
SD: A Stillman Project for the Walker Art
Center has been running for a couple of months now. What are some of your
thoughts about the results?
LJ: It is interesting for me to see how the
algorithm is playing out, how the blue has become the most dominant color
of the pages, and to see that those pages actually do have something in
common -- other than their "blue" visitors). I wonder about the accessibility
of the project, how the descriptive texts function. It is difficult to
get an understanding of that. It is important for interactive art to
be aware of its complexity and to portion it out to the user. I do
want the project to be "simple" on the surface with a
straightforward functionality that discloses a depth as the user's
investigation goes further.
SD: Are you a red, blue, or green mingler?
LJ: A mingler exists on the guest-host-parasite
continuum mentioned above. My role as an artist
is constantly shifting and my permissions are readjusted
accordingly. I use my host
permissions to re-type myself so that my presence on the site will not
affect the mapping. (The permission setting doesn't have to be actual; it
might only mean that I know the environment well enough to make myself
invisible. Visitors who wanted to could "cover their tracks" by re-typing
themselves at appropriate times.) Of the current statements, I more
strongly agree with the blue and green ones, which would make me a blue or
green guest/mingler, if I had accepted my invitation.
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