Hello Patrik and Nelly Ink!

I would like to ask you to do something for me.
Please describe the experience of trying to find Desert Walker via the remote robotic camera.
If you can recall your experience of watching, seeking and not finding that would be lovely.
Please do not confer with each other.
You didn’t find us, but did you find/discover something else?
How long did you spend searching the landscape?
Did you take any snapshots?
If so could you send them to me.

Thank you in advance!

From: Ellen Røed
Subject: Re: A request – writing about walking
Date: May 20, 2009 11:48:50 AM GMT+02:00
To: Amanda Steggell

Hello sweetest.

I might need some more time to reflect since it has been so long.

First of all, it wasn’t quite like that, meaning that your questions don’t really fit my experience.I wasn’t watching Desert Walker when the performance took place, I was looking for you. It was a few days before it took place and I was making a device for recording the performance remotely, wanting to be able to give it to you and say “This is what Desert Walker looked like from Laksevåg (in Norway).”

Knowing the time of your performance, a few days later, I was looking for the potential Desert Walker, for where it might take place, and I was looking for you guys preparing, or hanging round. I was searching for a few movements or differences in the landscape that would indicate your presence, like a dark piksel having shifted from one image to the next, or a pattern. Something that would be different from one image to the next. But the camera wouldn’t really keep still when I was working on it, only when I kept my hands off it for a long time, making the still view kind of random.

I found the Wendover cam hard to operate. I spent a lot of time struggling with navigating it away from the pole like thing, swearing, trying to push the distant viewfinder across the plane, into the wide distances, zoom in, so I could scan it and then slow it down, but the damned thing insisted on staring on this pole thing. Probably it was its own antenna.
Then, after having spinned around 360 degrees a few times I decided on where I thought you would be. Or perhaps where I wanted you to be. About three clicks on the right arrow and then zoom once, if I remember correctly.

It looked beautiful there, and it was quiet. Differences would show. I loved watching the shadow of the clouds sweeping over that area. I wondered if I managed to get any sequences of that in my picture bank. I also hoped someone else would try to operate the cam too, at the same time, and we could have this conversation of scanning.

I never found you, but I recorded thousands of images, and my device was ready for the real thing that would happen a few days later. I think I might have left it on all night. It clogged my hard drive and I had to dump the images on an external drive to clear the space for the real performance to happen, so I haven’t looked at them since.

I thought at least I would see the plane as an indication if I was wrong about the location. But then you performed Desert Walker 24 hours earlier than you indicated, so when I got your sms that you were about to start, I was in Utskott, in the valley of Samnangerfjord, (really deep down between mountains, in the rainiest place of Norway) completely offline, making a big fire and eating fish, so there was nothing I could do. My capturing device wasn’t even on, simply ready, at home. So I missed it.

Ill find some of the images for you.

Ellen aka ink

———————————————————

Ellen found me some of the images that she had captured, and made a timelapse video of them.

Dear Annesofie

I hope that you can help me with my writing about Desert Walker.

I would like you to try to recall the experience of

1. Surveying, photographing and making video recordings the salt playa from the plane.
In particular the physical experience of viewing the area via a camera.
For example; what did it feel like when you zoomed in on a specific area?

2. Recording the performance event form the plane.
Again, start with your physical experiences and perceptions.

If you could write in English I would be delighted.
thank you in advance

xxxa

From: Annesofie Norn
Subject: here it is
Date: April 24, 2009 5:29:05 PM GMT+02:00
To: Amanda Steggell

Dear Amanda
Hope you can use this.
Hugs,
Annesofie

That red metal box was the smallest plane I’ve ever been in. Two chairs just after each other. The propeller was manually pulled until it cached life. The steering connected to two strings would run along the walls and you had to be careful not pulling those strings. Both of the walls (sides of the plane) could open which was great for filming, but also chilling sitting there only with a safety small belt on. We had headphones for communications – the wind was roaring and the plane pretty lively – and he (the pilot) kept asking me thousand questions while I just felt that I should concentrate on not falling out. Actually he told me that he had considered to commit suicide lately, but I choose to take it as a joke.

We approached the salt flats. It was amazing to see the curving horizon and the drawings of straight lines with different colors of salty water cutting through the wild landscape. First I could only see the center where Per and Amanda were filming from and then the walkers scattered like tiny dark drops into the endless white uniting in the center and scattering again to all sides, pacing the sides of the square, then turning towards the middle. Over and over again.

We were circling around over the square, from high above, distant, on the side, on the other side, very low over the ground. I was constantly filming and occasionally taking photos. The wind was very strong and I had to cling on to the camera to keep it from shaking while starring into the screen to catch the walkers and there changing formations. Often the wing would come in the way when the real good shot was there and we would all the time have to search for new directions and be very alert to catch the moments.

After half an hour with endlessly rotations realized that I started to get very nauseous as well as really cold, but somehow I managed to give it less attention and concentrate on the task. After one hour we where low on gas and returned towards Wendover.

Rather than trying to write, we devise an installation version from discussing what is left of the performance – the residues – and what I am actually interested in addressing right here and now. In other words, to keep the text in the present – which is impossible, but to try and do it as much as possible.

It came about by my telling her about;

• an idea to reconstruct a part of Robert Smithson’s sketches for the Spiral Jetty embedded with scribbled excerpts from Samuel Beckett’s “Unnamble” without having actually seen the sketches, (and partly to avoid copyright issues involved with reproducing Smithson’s sketch book).

• talking about two art exhibitions we saw together here in Berlin at Arndt & Partener, and following a trail of gallery visitations proposed by Roman a week earlier. Sophie Calle, “Où et Quand? Berck and Où et Quand?”
  Calle lets a clairvoyant steer her journey. A montage of texts and documentary-like photographs describes it.

  Erik Bulatov, works from 2001- 08.
  “0″ 2001-08; optical aperture paintings
  “Je vis plus loin (ou Je continue à vivre)” [I live farther away (or I continue to live) 2008].

• a revisiting of Paul Virilio’s books/essays; “A Landscape of Events” and “Open Sky” (particularly initiated by Bulatov works)

I’ll try to restart the writing process through envisaging the installation.

HIGH RESOLUTION TIME EXPOSED
Glass plate collodion photograph of Desert Walkers.

Photo taken by Joni Sternbach in large-format camera/historic process (wet-plate collodion) where preparation and development have to take place on location.
At entrance.
(subdued lighting, the glass plate is illuminated)

MAGNIFYING MACHINE
Participatory installation

Large scale pantograph machine that visitors can use to retrace/recall the Quad walking pattern and the spatial magnification of the QUAD performance zone. Ideally four people could try and retrace the steps of the four Desert Walkers on the same, 4 armed pantograph and at the same time, where it would be a challenge to avoid collisions.

SKY DOWN (panoptic)
Video installation

8 minute sequence slowed down to a quarter of the actual speed of video footage from the plane projected as a square down onto the salt-covered floor.
(DV CAM: 25 fps, 720/576 pixels)

EARTH UP (telescopic)
Video installation

12 minute sequence from a Desert Walker rehearsal at Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels projected up onto a surface suspended just below the ceiling (a horizontal fog screen would be really cool). The camera is pointing directly upwards and the image is of the clouds passing by in a blue sky. At regular intervals parts of the bodies of the walkers are seen as they pass around the mid point. The projection is framed as a circle. On the floor is a circular carpet larger than projected circle (kind of inverse optical cone), where folks can lie down and watch the projection above. The beamer is in the centre of the circle.
(Action cam. 15 fps, 640/480 resolution)
(dark space, projected light, carpet lit)

SOLIDIFIED SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
Photograph wall
Photos from Desert Walker process/performance selected by Misha and displayed in chronological order.
(light space, “flat” lighting)

MONOLITHIC
Alternative 1: Light board

Shows the most monolithic still image from HD cam displayed on light board mounted on wall. (perhaps the one above or a sunset image)
(subdued lighting – light emission from the screen)

Alternative 2: HD monitor
Shows the most monolithic video pan filmed by Per on HD cam and displayed on HD monitor mounted on wall.
(subdued lighting – light emission from the screen)

DESERT WALKER: WHAT IS LEFT WHEN THE WALKING IS OVER?
BOOK FORMAT

- smithson’s sketch book (re-enacted by hand)
- Beckett’s Quad scheme (re-traced by hand)
- temporal space time (optical magnification and mini-fication, phenomonology, illusion, hallucination, time machine, etc) from observing the performance zone at a temporal/spatial distance
– via observing on-location video and still image documentation
– via remote robotic webcam (myself surveying the area before traveling to Utah, Patrik Entian who tried to watch the performance from Norway, but could not find us)
– via gps recording (made by Leon during the performance)
– via google map (satelite/map/terain)
– via transcripts of utterances by the Desert Walker team made during the process (interviews/various recordings)
– via transcripts of utterances of Desert Walkers made a year later in repsonse to questions I ask them via internet (email and instant text message). Example HERE

“Magnification is the process of enlarging something only in appearance, not in physical size. This enlargement is quantified by a calculated number also called magnification. When this number is less than one it refers to a reduction in size, sometimes called minification.

Typically magnification is related to scaling up visuals or images to be able to see more detail, increasing resolution, using optics, printing techniques, or digital processing. In all cases, the magnification of the image does not change the perspective of the image.

Maximum usable magnification

With any telescope or microscope, there is a maximum magnification beyond which the image looks bigger but shows no more detail. It occurs when the finest detail the instrument can resolve is magnified to match the finest detail the eye can see. Magnification beyond this maximum is sometimes called “empty magnification”.

(wikipedia)

QUAD/DESERT WALKER
- the stage is optically magnified (the nakedness of the salt playa providing a flat surface)
- the stage is limited only by the frame of the optical image as captured by the camera and viewed on a screen.

- otherwise it takes place on the crust of the earth.
- the performers are not magnified. They are minified!

Resident artist Neal White gives a guided tour of CLUI’s base in Wendover, Utah. Here he is showing Per a map of how the land is designated in quadrats.

Per says:

The “quads” in this sense actually stem from president Jefferson who instigated the PLSS system right after the revolutionary war in the 1780′s. Lots of info about it here.
PS: He is almost pointing to the single square owned by Nancy Holt (Robert Smithson’s wife), and maker of the Sun Tunnels.

I do not want to jump through a window. Not today. I just don’t feel up to it.

Today I am considering another option for a 4 screen video projection on 4 street level windows in a place where I would not walk unless I had to, and a street that is mainly trafficked by cars, lorries and buses.

Today I am thinking of people chatting through their keyboards and gazing into their horizon-less screen of their personal computers inside the building. I like to use Skype to keep in touch with people. It provides several options that can be used individually or simultaneously; video and audio, instant message texts with emoticons. You can add people to your contact list, and you can decide upon several options of accessibility and visibility.

If you use Skype a lot you can become familiar with the rhythms of people on your contact list. For example, you log on and suddenly someone appears to log off – or perhaps they have just made themselves invisible because they don’t want to have contact with you.

What I am thinking about, though I don’t quite know how to put it, is the invisible people inside the building who may be communicating with other people other places – but not you! In the ancient days of internet video teleconferencing (CU SeeMe) these people would be called “lurkers”. You could see how many lurkers were looking in on a session. If it was “your space” you could kick them out. With Skype, you have no way of knowing who is watching your status if they decide to become invisible.

So. I am thinking about displaying animated emoticons from Skype in juxtapositions or conversations with each other, but they do not have humans controlling them. They are simply chatting to each other via the emotions they are supposed to display. They can perform violent acts, such as punching the window, or direct punches at each other, or they can transmute into flowers, cocktails, pizzas – what ever. Flipping the same icon horizontally can make it appear that an emoticon is communicating with another in a neighbouring window.

Sometimes they get tired of chatting with each other, and wish to communicate with humans, but as there are few humans passing by on street level, and those that do are mainly trying to get from point A to point B, they get bored, irritated, argumentative. Perhaps after a while they decide to have a party to relieve the boredom.

They can jump between the windows (jump between the frames), but cannot be together in one window – they can only be neighbors. But they can kick each other out of their windows. The two windows that guard each side of the door are the most desirable positions to hold … perhaps a human will go through the door, in which case a potential meeting between the humans and the emoticons is evoked.

When an emoticon does not wish to be present it can disappear leaving a blank window. (Perhaps, when all the windows are blank, some text could appear – but only one word in each window, or perhaps one letter in each window could be an option too. And they should appear rhythmically.)

The emoticons are simple, bright graphics so it is easy to see them if you are just driving past.

A title for this work may be AFFECTI CONS

Or perhaps URBAN GLYPHS is better?

Or maybe just LURKERS, or LURKING AROUND or GLYPHICAL LURKERS ??????

The sequence of emoticons could be informed by transcripts of instant messaging conversations I have saved on my computer. Of course the installation could be interactive – people could send emoticons to the installation via cell phones, computers, etc, but that is really not the point. (Keeping to the idea of What is a window? Part 1: I did this yesterday, and that the emoticons have no human counterpart.) Perhaps a motion sensor (ultrasound?) could be used to cause excitement when/if a person stops by a window.

I am not sure

An interface between the outside and the inside?

Windows are generally opened from the inside – unless they are part of a door – but then it is the door that is opened rather than the window – unless the window can be opened independently of the door, such as in a car or lorry.

When opened it should allow air to come in, but not anything else really.But perhaps you open a window to shout to a friend/relation, throw out keys or pass other objects from the outside to the inside or vice-versa, let the cat in or out, ask for directions, buy fast food in a drive-in, etc.

When closed it should keep everything out - and in (as in a plane or rocket window), except that which is desirable to the eye.

Ground floor windows, particularly those in streets where people do not walk too often,  are susceptible to “deviant” actions such as  smashing, defacing (more ?). These actions generally occur during the night, though sometimes during public uprisings/demos. In the former case the action often goes unseen, and the broken window is a record that the occurrence has happened.  The window is generally repaired the day after, as if nothing has happened.  In the latter it is a display of …. of ….?

Ground floor windows are susceptible to pollution, especially in places that are mostly trafficked by cars/lorries, etc, rather than pedestrians and need to be kept clean if you want people to see through them. Obstructions such as curtains or blinds can be used if you want to keep people from looking in or out (or to keep the sun out). Grime can do that too.

Ground floor windows can be shop fronts that display adverts and products on sale inside. They can belong to a restaurant, and show how cozy or exclusive it is inside, or to a hair dresser where you can see how popular or trendy or relaxing the salon is. As a customer you are on display. Perhaps you like to show something about your status, taste, etc?

Ground floor windows can belong to massage palours, or clandestine clubs where the interior is hidden with only teasers displayed to the world outside, and so on. These windows suggest, or flirt with “deviant behaviour” and customer privacy (though it might not be the case – not really).

At any rate, the intention is to draw people in – through the door! They generally display data that tells when the inside is accessible from the outside.

Windows on higher floors are less susceptible to deviant behaviour, but not immune.

Stones can be thrown at them.

Bullets can be shot at them.

Things can be thrown, or shot out of them.

In some circumstances people can climb up to them and break them to get in.

People can jump out of -  or through them.

Why would they do that?

A last resort: to escape from something really bad happening inside. Abuse/violence, accidents, fire?

To escape something happening inside of people. Fear, loneliness, hopelessness.

To accomplish something?

A suicide wish?

Or perhaps you are bored, frustrated, and just want to hear the sound of breaking glass really close up.

Perhaps you want to impress your friends, by re-enacting something you have seen at the movies – and hopefully survive the stunt.

So here is a hypothetical situation.

An invitation to send in a proposal for a video work to be displayed on 4 windows of a street level building which lies on “a busy route for traffic moving in and out of the city, and the (…) project has the potential of reaching thousands of viewers everyday”.

Yes! But people don’t walk there unless they have to! It is mainly a passage for vehicles. I would not walk there unless I had to.

The project accepts “proposals for site-specific video installations that are innovative in their approach and daring in their exploration.”

Sounds promising. However:

“Sound is not an option (….) and we prioritize non-narrative and non-violent imagery.”

and some words offered as inspiration:

“How do we define the term site specific? Who is the public for public art? Where are the boundaries between the public and the private? How do four separate screens interact and rhyme with each other? How is the life span of video art in the public space?”

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!

How can one be daring in approach under such instructions ?

Are the conditions imposed by the gallery/project or from somewhere else, such as the municipality of the city?

There is violence in the city, and everywhere.

What does non-violent mean in this proposal? Where do the boundaries go?

What if I want to hear the sound of breaking glass, close up, and as a non-violent act?

Shouldn’t a work be “site sensitive” (responsive) as opposed to “site specific” (designed) ….

Is the only solution to reduce everything to rhetorics – or in other words, special effects?

What is this invitation, except to reproduce the same eternal self-mirroring, containing the same un-never, non-conflitctional, nothing here, nothing now?

So, I am thinking about a proposition …..

<< I did this yesterday >>

and jump through a window, as a special effect, you understand.

Skype conversation with Saila 11th March 2009.

Amanda Steggell
12.49 AM: Hi Saila
12:50 PM: I am writing about Desert Walker and I have a question for you if you have time.

Saila Hyttinen
12:51 PM: Nice. I am just writing some emails. Can contact you when I’m ready in about 20 min?

Amanda Steggell
12:51 PM: Ok. Good.
12:52 PM: I’ll post the question here and you can look at it when u r ready.
12:54 PM: Can you tell me what you thought and/or felt when you had completed your last round of walking, when you were waiting for the performance to end, and when it finally seemed to have ended.

Saila Hyttinen
1:33 PM: I thought nothing during the first minutes, but a feeling of joyful emptiness filled me. A very good feeling. Then I thought that I could continue to walk if I wanted to. I MADE IT !!!! After a while fatigue and the coldness took over my muscles. The view was so beautiful. There, within it, are my fellow Desert Walkers. Are they going to make it?

Amanda Steggell
1:34 PM: Thank you.
1:35 PM: What about when it grew dark? When Håkon wandered off into the darkness alone. Did you think about him? When did you know it was over?

Saila Hyttinen
1:43 PM: I thought it looked great when Håkon continued to walk. A totally fantastic image as he walked into endlessness. After a while, as we packed together our things and drove out to find Håkon (who had disappeared into the darkness) I became frightened that he would be sucked up by Nothingness/Infinity. It was not until we arrived back at the motel and I was lying in a hot bath that I finally realised that it was over.

Email to Håkon

From: Amanda Steggell
Sent: 11. mars 2009 12:38
To: Håkon Gundersen
Subject: Desert Walker. A question

Hello Håkon

I am in Berlin writing about Desert Walker. I have a question for you. Can you tell me what you felt/thought and any impressions of when you walked out into the darkness at the end of the last round.

wbw
Amanda

From: Håkon Gundersen
Subject: Desert Walker. A question
Date: March 11, 2009 1:50:47 PM GMT+01:00
To: Amanda Steggell

I remember thoughts and feelings, but also that I was conscious of what I was thinking and feeling. In one sense, then, it was not authentic. On the other side these thoughts and feelings were authentic, cause the whole square was an intellectual as well as a physical experience.
Anyway: I felt relief when the pattern was completed and a surge of energy when I could walk on outside of the pattern and just go straight. I walked pretty far, that’s what Per said, who came in a car to pick me up. I could have walked much further without being exhausted, but it was getting dark and a bit scary. What if nobody finds me?

I had been thinking, while walking the square, that this was a safe way to live. Good to always do the same, the sun and wind from various positions, north, south, east, west, provided sufficient variety in life. And the whole walk also became a metaphor of life. (which everything tends to be).

So when walking into the distance at the end I was wondering if I now would feel unsafe, out on my own and insecure. But I didn’t. The experience of being within a comfortable metaphor was not that deep, or not that intellectual. Breaking the square gave a feeling of relief. For my legs, my back and my mind.
But I pissed two times out there, while walking, with all of you out of sight.
And I was wondering if I should turn the flashlight on – thinking that it would look good in your film- or if I should keep it off, to save batteries in case I really would need a light in order to be found. I think I left it on first, then turned it off for a while, and then on.

- something like this, Amanda. Make out of it whatever you can.

On Mar 11, 2009, at 13:57 PM, Amanda Steggell wrote:

Lovely. Thank you. One more little question.
When did you know that it was over?

On Mar 11, 2009, at 14:01 PM, Håkon Gundersen wrote:

Good question! I remember that I stopped walking in the ”desert walker”-tempo/rhythm some time before I heard the car behind me. But this was longer after anyone could see me. So “it” continued on my own. But then enough. I started “å rusle rolig” (to wander slowly).

On Mar 11, 2009, at 14:07 PM, Amanda Steggell wrote:

Cheers. I am struggling a bit, torn between sitting inside and writing and going out and having fun! As Beckett would say, I can’t go on, I must go on

On Mar 11, 2009, at 14:09 PM, Håkon Gundersen wrote:

Write some more. Then out. Thanks for the link, will look at it later. Now writing.

cutting out the fluffy stuff

This version bringing in more info. about first meeting with Wendover, CLUI, remote viewing, info about wendover and surrounding playa – In death valley installtion …. basic background stuff.