Presented during Berlinale in association with Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival and with support from Hardware Hack Lab. Aeon Magazine is now streaming the complete film version. In Twitter use #StreetViewsLive.
In a piece that plays with ideas of presence and live art, video artist Annie Berman will open her installation with a real-time broadcast from her Google Glasses. The broadcast documents her own live performance, as she occupies her installation and invites live and virtual interaction from her audience. She will also distribute special masks for viewers who wish to remain anonymous, or at least obscure their faces.
STREET VIEWS is an 8 minute projected video that explores how virtual mapping alters our experience of space, identity, and one another. Set in New York City’s famed West Village, but ‘shot’ within Google’s street view mapping application, STREET VIEWS attempts to navigate a surreal, disoriented new landscape. With humor and a light touch, Berman wanders through the streets of the big city frozen in timelessness, passing by pixelated faces, looking for something human on the digital display.
In its original conception, this piece utilizes a traditional disembodied voice of the narrator. When invited to install this piece in Germany, the artist decided to experiment with the idea of the disembodied narrator as another form of a virtual presence. Using a second monitor, she screens footage of herself delivering the narration, blurring her face to emphasize the virtual nature of this presence. The monitor also is given its own microphone as if it were a person reading at a conventionally staged live performance.
STREET VIEWS is now one of five featured media installations from Kassel’s Dokfest on exhibit at Galerie Patrick Ebesnperger, Berlin. The theme of the exhibition seeks to re-examine the scopes and realities of our present technological age.
On opening night, Berman will further investigate the reality of embodiment/liveness/the artist’s presence/performance/live film, by performing a live broadcast of the installation, wearing Google Glasses (‘Glass’). Her direct sight and interactions will be broadcast via Google Glass, streaming live via the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network athowlround.tv Saturday, February 14 at 8pm CET (Berlin) / 7pm GMT (London) / 2pm EST (New York) / 1pm CST (Chicago) / 11am PST (Los Angeles).
- See more at: http://howlround.com/livestreaming-google-glass-performance-of-annie-berman-s-street-views-at-galerie-patrick-ebensperger#sthash.LoZrrPfe.dpuf
LIvestream recording from Google glass worn by the artist at the opening reception of Monitoring - Selected at Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Feb 14, 2015, Berlin. Masks were provided for visitors should they desire anonymity.
The VR edition is now available as a free download for GearVR. Instructions on how to install GearVR apps here.
Utopia 1.0 in VR was created at The NYU VR LAB with Mahe Dewan, Javier Molina, Todd Bryant, and Annie Berman for the Gear VR. This project was made possible with funds from the Media Arts Assistance Fund, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts, Electronic Media and Film, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; administered by Wave Farm.
The prototype was created by Dave Tennent with Lee Tusman and Annie Berman with support of Art-A-Hack, ThoughtWorks, Andrew McWilliams and Ellen Pearlman, and exhibited at Babycastles Gallery NYC with thanks to Lauren Gardner. Our real life avatar hosts played by Ying Liu, Hugo Genes, and Josie Alexa Berman seated guests and served them popcorn.
As part of the Living Los Sures exhibit for the 2014 New York Film Festival's Convergence Program at the Ildiko Butler Gallery, Fordham University.
Answering the ringing phone activates both the audio and video. The audio comprises 20 minutes of edited phone calls between the artist and an anonymous Hasidic man in her Brooklyn neighborhood. The video is a white line that vibrates according to their vocal frequencies.
Video walk-thru of Living Los Sures installation as part of the 2014 New York Film Festival (NYFF) Convergence Program at the Ildiko Butler Gallery.
On display at the Megapolis Audio Art festival at the New School, NY, NY, 2013.
Installed at the Lower East Side Film Festival, closing night party, NY, NY, 2014
