Presentation Topic: Constrained City / the pain of everyday life

Constrained City / the pain of everyday life by Gordan Savicic

 http://pain.yugo.at/

Description

It's an art performance by a Austrian artist Gordan Savicic who's interested in the investigation of the environmental effects on human's mind and behavior. For example, one becomes annoyed in a train crammed with lots of people or in a noisy public space, one the contrary, one becomes relaxed in a countryside with beautiful landscape and fresh air. It's a very interesting and experimental art performance with a psycho-geographic dimension. According to Guy Debord a French theorist, Psycho-geography is "...the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals..." (Guy Debord presente Potlatch, 1996) In this art piece, Savicic studied human's behavior and emotion towards the urban environment and also experimented on the outcome and side effect of modern technology and mechanism.

It's an urban systems' experience consisted of electromagnetic waves. The artist put a 'strait-jacket' with motors and a WIFI-enabled game-console which detects electromagnetic signals generated by wireless networks. The motors in the jacket tighten his body when wireless networks are detected. Thus, the higher the density of electromagnetic waves is, the deeper the wounds on the body become.

A new way of experiencing the urban systems

In the experience of human-machine interface, the artist became a Cyborg with a 'city-shaped' body, being able to perceive the invisibility of electromagnetic waves that human can never experience without the device. According to Christiance Paul, Cyborg is “an increasing fusion of the body and the machine”(Body and identity, p.167) Regarding the same passage, some art projects associated with human-machine fusion “try to introduce the body to digital perception…”(Christiance Paul, p.173) In this art performance, the piece of hi-tech brings human to a new dimension of human perception where one’s perceptions are extended from the limitation of human inborn ability, including sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. With the perception provided by the machine, one’s behavior is changed by taking an alternative route to work or to school due to the awareness of the electromagnetic signals. Thus it shows the psycho-geographic dimension of exploring the urban systems by applying "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.“, according to an article “A New Way of Walking”. (Joseph Hart, 2004)

Is it necessary?

To me it’s unnecessary to use this piece of hi-tech into our lives. There are two main reasons for the objection, including its possible outcome of technology obsession and its moral problem. 

In the art performance, one benefits from technology by having an extra sense to experience things from a new aspect. However one may ignore his ability to see, hear, touch, taste and to smell. For example, there’s a very common situation that we occasionally make mistakes on spelling and become too lazy to write by our hands as we always write texts using computer software, such as Microsoft Word a very useful writing tool which can automatically correct most of the spelling and grammatical mistakes.

The increasing relationship with machine and modern technology not only provides human a new way of exploring the city, but, according to Savicic, it also reveals their desire to explore pain. (Concept, Theory October 15, 2008) The pleasure of self-torturing is indicated in the design of the jacket. The jacket is anything but wearable that resembles a piece of skeleton or a strait-jacket worn by mental patients. It reminds me of corset and foot binding which are the feminine fashions in the old days for women who desire to get a perfect body shape and feet. In this art performance, because of the desire to build a closer relationship with machines, one would choose to put on the jacket not matter how painful it causes. Ironically, one can be more than a human, surpassing the limits of human ability but at the same time he lowers himself and accepts the pain by the poorly-designed jacket which is not even humane to wear. Technology seems to advance people’s lives. However we seems to forget to question ourselves if it’s right to subject ourselves to machines. If everything in this planet can be done by technology, what does it mean being a human?