In search for the present time: augmented reality and its space-time relations

A series of absolutely similar paintings in their formal schemes, always with different background colors, currently varying among the darker colors, on which are painted dates – day, month and year – almost always in the same white font. To see the works by On Kawara, conceptual Japanese artist living in New York, causes a strange feeling, since they seem to be showing us time. We are called to see “that” present time. We confront presents and we cross the space-time that we experience when we see them with “that” crystallized present time.

On Kawara’s work is structured around time and the emergent temporalities of everyday life. It is not a chronometer or a calendar – although the paintings always bring a date –, but a form of depicting present time and of trying to tension even more the relations between art and the temporalities. The central question of On Kawara’s works, as Jean-Luc Nancy (1997) points out, is how to expose what is impossible to be exposed: present time, pure time detached from temporality and space.

On Kawara’s artistic enterprise is structured around the space-time relations that call upon present time, generating a tensioning temporality that puts us in contact with “that” present and with “this” one that we experience before the paintings. The fruition of the works seems to come from this “presentation-confrontation”, from the exposition of what is impossible to be exposed. A time that paradoxically goes by, but that is retained by the concentration force of On Kawara’s work, especially in the series of works from the 1960s entitled “Today series”. The paintings of this series are always painted in the same day. None of them was finished in a day that was not the date that shows on the canvas. The works are stored in their own paper packaging with a clipping from the newspaper of the city and the day in which it was produced.

On Kawara’s work, this peculiar mode of leading temporalities into present time, can serve as a starting point to synthesize some moments of rupture and the rearticulation in the contemporary artistic production throughout time. As On Kawara radicalizes the way to show time, making it always present, in these moments we can also observe that there was a desire to make time and space more and more present.

In some way, each of these moments – oriented by the social relationships developed with technology and by the questions related to subjectivity – can also be articulated around a presentification. In the Renaissance, the figurative paintings produced considering the parameters of perspective tried, in some way, to confront the present time of production with that of contemplation. The idea of creating a mathematically rational space created the illusion of looking, in some cases in a very clear way, through a window to a scene that happened there, before us. There was an orientation towards the present time of the action, albeit still tenuous. The observers enjoyed these works in this come and go between times and spaces; pasts that are constantly made present.

Chronophotography emphasized the record of the movement made present, cutting and overlapping the duration of the actions. This situation impacted on the avant-garde productions, which showed in paintings and sculptures the duration of time in space. They call upon us to travel with our look the marks and interruptions (especially in the cubist collage of Picasso and Braque) that invite us to observe a clear presentification. The optical marks left by the rapid movement of the dog’s leash in Balla are there, at that unique moment, the sum of many other movements that record space by the vector of present time.

The closed circuit installations and art communication, as well as telematic art, effectively approximate distant times and spaces, bringing them to the artistic environment and inviting us to enjoy the works in this interval between “there and here”. Through these works we join a space-time relation that makes everything present, in a situation of immediacy and simultaneity not much explored in the art field. These works overlap the dimensions of time and the dynamics of space even more intensely. They are an attempt to require that the subject faces the works that start to develop, taking time and space in a tension between the “here-now” and the “there-now” in many forms of presence; they are a confrontation of times always made present and spaces that are traversed by the power of the intersections between real and virtual.

This alignment around the vector of present time was somehow made possible by the ways in which the technological instruments were appropriated by the subjects in social life. Nowadays, technology (especially mobile communication devices) is even more entrenched, both in the many spheres of everyday life and in the artistic production. Certainly, the main change in the contemporary technological ambiance is the speed technological devices start to be used by many people from different social classes and with the most diverse objectives.

Social life makes use of the new technological environment in all its complexity. On the one hand, there is the intensification of the processes of surveillance and control, the uncontrolled exposure to the most diverse pieces of information, the development of a logic of social control and the processes of territorialization and deterritorialization. On the other hand, multiple mediations between subjects, structured in the most different ways, are also established with the use of the technologies, and they create new and unexpected forms of interaction.

Present time is also the vector that agglutinates the experiences in this new social environment full of technologies; a thicker present time, which co-opts the real time of technological structures, as well as other dimensions of time, aligning them around the same vector. Currently, this vector of present time enables the simultaneity of new communication circuits that are mixed with the space-time contexts of the surroundings which these mediations cross; a vector that aligns the relationships of neighboring, the instant territories, and the discontinuous space of heterotopia around relative distances. Nowadays, the vector Present, multiple by nature, brings in itself the paradoxes of the new communicational situations developed in the nomadisms and in the eventualities of the contemporary space.

This vector Present is articulated in a multiplicity of other temporalities, requiring, unlike real time, a more critical and paradoxical experience. The idea is not to align the temporal experience by the processing time and the answers of the computing systems, but to align it around a vector Present, which is structured in the eventualities of the multiple contexts and in the temporalities awakened by the subjects when they use communication structures and computing systems. Because of that, the vector Present has a length and, instead of annihilating the other dimensions of time, as suggested Paul Virilio, the vector makes them align around and from it. Currently this vectorization around present time makes space-time arrangements emerge, which we call timescapes. In the domain of the real time of technology, the timescapes are configured as a complex temporal paradox that, by taking the alignments of other temporal dimensions around the vector Present, make the unfolding of space possible, which then becomes discontinuous and full of overlaps.

In current media art production this situation of alignment around present time occurs even more intensely when artists start to structure their works with techniques, proceedings, and equipments that intensify the tensions between the deferred time and the real time, the physical space of the surrounding and the virtualizations, the network and the distinct forms of presence. Some works in the field of media art, produced with techniques and proceedings typical of mixed reality, take this tensioning to situate the subjects between the hybrid of the real and the virtual in distinct levels.

We call mixed reality a group of techniques that make it possible to situate the subjects between the hybrid of the real and the several virtualizations. In order to understand this new concept, we can consider it within a broader context in order to clarify specially the situations of passage between real and virtual and their ways of articulation in relation to the subjects that experience these systems in the works of media art.

One way to understand in a broader way the relation between real environments, augmented reality, and virtual reality associated with the concept of mixed reality, is to take the “reality-virtuality continuum” developed by Milgram (1994).

The diagram proposed by Milgram is very precise, mainly because it suggests a situation that occurs in different levels and degrees, going from the real environments to the virtual ones, but linked to the same group of relations around distinct spatial situations. On the left of the continuum we have the real environments and on the right we have the virtual ones. When we go from one end to the other, we pass through augmented reality and then through augmented virtuality to arrive at the completely virtual environments. According to Milgram, “within this framework it is straightforward to define a generic mixed reality environment as one in which real world and virtual world objects are presented together within a single display, that is, anywhere between the extreme of the virtual reality continuum.” (MILGRAM, 1994, p.283).

Although the continuum proposed by Milgram operates specifically in the technical field, we can also use it to discuss the works of media art that are structured around systems of mixed reality. These are works that show in a very intense way the passages between real and virtual, provoking space-time arrangements, such as the timescapes. We are interested here in the intermediate zones between real and virtual and in the impact on the subjects’ perceptions when experiencing these situations.

The entering of subjects in these systems, both of mixed and of virtual reality, provokes the passage from an optical to a haptic perception, given that in some way we can touch the objects. That means that, if previously the works were placed only before our eyes, now we are asked to use our whole body, with its movements, to enjoy the work. This situation had already started to be designed in the participation theories especially from the second half of the 20th century, when the subjects were invited to experience the works in the installations with all their senses. However, this required corporeity now designs a new perceptual matrix in the case of the media art works. It is, as Couchot affirms, “a sensitively different corporeity, a hybrid of flesh and calculation” (COUCHOT, 2007, p.04). It is in this situation of hybridism that perception may become synaptic or rhizomatic, when the works entrench in the network schemes, creating situations of dialogue and exchange between scattered subjects mediated through computers.

According to Couchot, the subject rigged to a digital network develops a “dialogical ubiquity”, very different from those which we experienced in the traditional communication structures such as the radio and the television. The synaptic or rhizomatic perception is born from this ubiquity which, as Couchot points out, “opens a reticular and connective virtual space, equipped with specific topologic characteristics and constituting a means situated half-way between the individual and the collective, the subject and the society” (COUCHOT, 2003, p. 276)[1].

In the schemes of mixed reality, the forms of perception and the space-time relations are altered, given that the space-time dimensions of both the physical surrounding and those of the technical systems are all part of the same thing. We can perceive these alterations when we experience the virtual placed in the real (augmented reality) or vice-versa (augmented virtuality), a mixture of spaces and times typical of each one of the domains. The real times and spaces, subjectively experienced in these systems, seem to push those experienced in the virtual environment. When brought to the domain of media art, the experience in the “virtuality-reality continuum”, as Milgram pointed out, becomes even more enjoyable, given that, as we will see further on, some works are set up in intermediate zones between augmented reality and augmented virtuality.

Timescapes the new space-time arrangements

If On Kawara makes time present by freezing it in his works, exposing the today and the now of this time that passes, the media art works structured around mixed reality belong to the paradox of the timescapes, a present time that, in spite of passing fleetingly, lasts beyond the moment. This present time is linked to the eventuality (COUCHOT, 2007) of the interactions and is made present in the tension and in the passage between time and space, as well as in the non-limits between real and virtual. The works in this situation shape web-territories that can, at the same time, overlap with the physicality of physical space and the typical virtualities of the networks and digital environments. Time aligns around the vector of present and makes the other dimensions coexist.

These new space-time arrangements, which we call timescapes, can be perceived in more tenuous ways in several everyday situations, and in a more intense way in media art. The timescapes are built around the passages between real and virtual spaces and reverberate in the temporalities which, by co-opting the power of real time, align around the vector of present time. It is a part of the movement of space that gathers vectors and power lines, both from the real and from the virtual space, in constant updating, which result in making time present at the same time that it maintains a duration, such as “a multiplicity of originated presents”, as Couchot points out.

Thus, we can define timescape as a space-time arrangement that is structured by bringing together distinct times and spaces, arranged as if in a landscape in which we see the time dimensions aligned and organized around the vector of present time. The space, in turn, unfolds and starts to move intensely around real and virtual spaces, “fixed and fluid”, potentiated by the works. Shaped by multiple times and real and virtual spaces, the timescapes confront presents, accumulated pasts ready to be made present, and futures opened from those unique events.

The timescapes can also be noticed as we slide through Milgram’s continuum around the relations between the real and the virtual space and their temporalities in different degrees of intensity, provoking territorializations and deterritorializations in the way through which we experience the space-time dimensions in these passages. We can return to Foucault’s heterotopias and see that our experience in space effectively passes through neighborhood relationships, with new forms of presence oscillating between physical unipresence and mediated pluripresence (WEISSBERG). These are situations that allow us to transit space and see the digital representations overlapped, broadening our way to occupy and give sense to the real. In the schemes of mixed reality, the space-time relations are intensely complex, considering that the space-time relations of both the physical surrounding and the systems are part of the same game. Couchot shows us these complexities are awakened by the mixture between space-time proposed by the work and the physical surroundings when he comments on an archaeology guide used in Greece that uses resources of mixed reality:

This tensioning situation between the physical space-time experienced more directly by the subjects and that space-time enabled by the system, as Couchot has shown, also occurs in several media art works. Situations such as these require that we create other models to understand what happens, given that there is a profusion of spaces and times, passages of all sorts, and hybrid situations.

The timescapes, space-time arrangements typical of these situations of mixed reality, linked to the haptic or rhizomatic perception, are generated, as we saw before, around the alignment of the vector of present time. Considering the vector Present as a  driving force, the timescapes align happenings and cross transversally the real space, the subjects and their multiple links with the surrounding space-time, the virtual representations and their real data processing times, designing a sort of landscape of times and spaces. The present time of that event, which puts together other temporalities, has a duration and overlaps, in some real and virtual situations, subjective and chronological times. However, because everything is aligned around this vector of present time, this multiplicity of eventualities lasts, each one of them bringing their own space-time relations.

We can see that the timescapes incite the experience to develop around this duration of the present. Everything occurs because of that unique moment: the space-time arrangement produces a cutout, is linked to each one of the situations it experiences, and at the same time retains traces of all these space-time relations that, in some way, affect both the subjects and the technical regimes traversed. This occurs because the surrounding which the subject is part of does not stop. Neither does the subject disconnect completely from the real, considering that we are at the domain of mixed reality. This is the reason for the space-time experience to become so complex, such as in the archeological guide commented by Couchot: because there are many space-time relations that intersect. What we claim when call this space-time arrangement timescapes is the possibility of capture this movement that crosses distinct space-time relations of many domains.

Because of the hybrid nature of their configuration that is developed in the transversal framework of many space-time relations, each with their own specificities inside the reality-virtuality of the continuum, the timescapes also occur in distinct degrees of intensity. These degrees correspond to different levels of intersection between real and virtual and tell us about the way in which the real surrounding is “mixed” with the virtual ones available in the systems and vice-versa. Defining these degrees of intensity is extremely complex due to the diversity of projects in the field of media art. As we saw before, there are numberless techniques, proceedings, and devices used by the artists, making it almost impossible classify them, given that hybridism is one of the most accentuated features of these artistic productions. However, in order to advance in the definition of the timescapes, it is important to explore these distinct intensities, even though we know that some works will need to be placed in intermediate zones.

If we take these definitions into account, we can establish three degrees of intensity for the timescapes, which include the most elementary to the most complex in relation to the way they create passages between real and virtual. We experience different levels of relationships between the subjects exposed to the technologies, to the real space-time, and to the virtualities typical of the digital environments. The first degree timescapes occur in those works or technological appliances that in some way put the subject in a situation which, by exploring the virtualities of a computing system, divide the attentions between the real space-time and the requirements of the virtual space-time. There is no effective overlapping, but a sharing of attention – states of semi-immersion – that depend on the rhythm of the surrounding and on the subject’s will to immerge more or less, considering that the system has no closer connections with the immediate surroundings, where the subject is, and, in turn, the immediate surrounding does not impact directly on the subject.

It is possible to perceive these first degree timescapes in everyday life, when we use ATMs, stuck in the middle of the chaos of the cities; when we access the internet on cell phones; or in the structures of locative media, among others. It may seem strange to include in this first division the space-time arrangements generated by the use of these equipments and devices, but the popularity and the ease of access to these types of interaction platforms have become more frequent in everyday life. Now, while we move through the urban space we can join in some way the informational flow and the mediations that shape other territories almost instantly. All this has become a mass phenomenon, as Couchot observes:

We consider this uncommon relationship with time, which Couchot calls attention to, a first degree timescape. We are linked to the time-space in which our bodies are immersed, but we let ourselves partially involve in the many types of requirements and interactions that these systems propose. This situation is recurrent in everyday life when we experience a constant discontinuity between spaces and times. We transverse the physicalities of our surrounding, partially involved in cell phones or portable games, but there is no more effective or direct passage between real spaces-times and those that we experience in the devices. There is no passage or a more direct contamination between the immediate real and the virtualities, even though we are involved and we act on both sides. The actions of one side do not impact or structure actions directly on the other.

Despite not being structured around the passages between real and virtual, we can include telematic art in the first degree timescapes. Although they do not operate with virtual environments, by nature these works maintain strong connections with the physical space, which somehow expands, enabling actions at a distance. Hence, in spite of not being structured in the virtuality-reality continuum, we believe that telematic art bring about many changes in the space-time arrangements because of the nature of the operations that approximate the distant, transforming it into a territory for our actions. Works such as “Light on the net” (1996) by Mazaki Fujihata, “Telegarden” (1995-2004) by Ken Goldberg and “Teleporting to unknown state” (1994-1996) by Eduardo Kac can be included in the first degree timescapes. In general, we can include the telematic works in this first degree of intensity because they establish a relation between distant spaces which, by the actions of our “mediated pluripresence”, become discontinuous territories linked by the transmissions.

However, the actions in that territory, which seems to be so close, do not impact more directly on the space where our bodies are, on our immediate surroundings. Our actions configure changes in “there”, but not in “here”. Naturally, the links are strong because of our form of presence, but without changes in the immediate surroundings. More than that, our actions impact physically, in the case of these three works, on the distant space where they are installed, but neither reshape nor activate our surrounding, or our way of perceiving it. To experience these works, or even the mobile communication platforms disseminated in social life, brings a strong feeling of “being there”, of actions distended through space and time. However, the intersection of distances does not generate substantial changes in our surrounding. Our physical surrounding is not directly included in the dynamics that the works promote. In general, the telematic works generate first degree timescapes because they show threshold situations of the discontinuous territories, shaping mixtures of spaces near and far– which are instantly established through our forms of interaction.

In order to characterize the second degree timescapes we will approach the works structured around augmented virtuality; works that do not shut us down completely from the physical space, but that allow us to experience actions in both spaces, through real situations, in video or photography, which we explore in digital systems of interaction. These are works that use imagetic schemes captured from the real that appeal to the virtual in the forms of organization and programming. With that, the space-time arrangements developed by these works provoke passages and situations between the real and the virtual, especially because our actions in the real impact in some way on the virtual.

Time in these works is also oriented by the vector of present time; it does not accumulate pasts; the marks of our interaction in the spaces-times of the works cannot be fixed; and each one that experiences them always begins from a point without previous accumulations. In these works, the past only accumulates in the forms of programming that allow us to interact, bringing them and updating them in the present time. That is why they are effectively past. They are accumulated “virtual-presents” waiting for our update. The work is always in the present time for each subject that experiences it. In contrast with the works that we included in the first degree timescapes, in the second degree our actions impact on space, considering that the structures of the works occupy a physical space that shelters us and, more than that, changes according to our forms of interaction, making the overlap between real and virtual time and spaces more intense than those of the first degree. Among the works considered to be second degree timescapes we can include some by Jeffrey Shaw, which are perfect examples for this situation. “Place: a user’s manual” (1996) and “Place-Ruhr” (2000), for instance, explore more directly the situations of space and time, generating space-time arrangements like timescapes.

The works are very similar and are structured around the same general working scheme, but with changes in the images and in the mode of interaction. It is an architectonic structure with a projection screen in 360o, as if it were a big cylinder with a rotating platform installed in the center. In “Place: a user’s manual”, it is possible to command the movements of the platform and to interact with the photographic images by activating an adapted video camera. When we assume control of the camera, we command the movement of the platform and navigate the images on the screen. As the platform rotates, it is possible to “enter” cylinders composed of panoramic photographic images disposed on a map. In this virtual environment we can see these images and with the movements of the platform and the 120o projection, we have the strong feeling of unveiling the space.

In “Place-Ruhr” we have the same architectonic scheme of the projection screen and the platform, but we interact by activating the controls of a small underwater camera. Besides, the cylinders are composed of sequences of moving images, which broadens the degree of complexity of the work. In the rotating platforms of both works, there is a small microphone that captures noises and sounds produced by the subject during the interaction. The platforms show sequences with words and texts modeled in graphic computing in three dimensions, which are generated in the moment of interaction and automatically overlap the image. We can consider “Place-Ruhr” a version of “Place: a user’s manual” with more powerful forms of interaction and images.

In both works the spatial schemes dominate the scene. We travel a virtual space constructed with real scenes. In “Place-Ruhr”, because the images are moving sequences, the illusion of “travelling” the space is even greater than in “Place: a user’s manual”. However, we do not travel, but navigate the space by entering the cylinders to discover the images. In this situation, the works associate the surrounding space, given that we explore the virtual space exhibited in the projections with the circular movements of the platform. We are dislocating in the physical and virtual spaces that are aligned by the commands in the rotating platform. The similarity between the proportion of the cylindrical form (Figure 40) that we see in the virtual environment and the one we see on the screen amplifies the passages between real and virtual.

The relation between the movements of the platform, the images that seem to unveil before us, and the same proportion between the projection screen and the virtual cylinders provoke a strong feeling of being in that space, of mixture between the space-time in which we are immersed and that which the work requires. The sensation is so strong that we do not feel time passing, which caused certain problems in the exhibition: people experienced the work for too long, creating long lines during peak times. Even though we do not shut down completely from the immediate surroundings, the work promotes a very intense mixture between reals and virtuals and provokes an immersion in Ruhr’s industrial universe, as Oliver Grau observed:

Mark Hansen comments these works by Shaw and highlights these passages for the construction of meaning in the works. For Hansen, “the effect of this spatial configuration is to make the virtual dimension dependent on the coordinates of the actual physical space in which the viewer finds herself” (HANSEN, 2004, p. 86).

In “Place-Ruhr”, Shaw also seems to put into play the situations inherited from the old Panoramas, in two directions: the first, very clear, relates to the cylindrical form of the screen, a direct reference. The second, more subtle, is revealed as we see the spaces that Shaw shows us in the work.  We navigate the industrial region of the surroundings of Ruhr, which is completely dominated by heavy industry. The vision is at least melancholia of and, in contrast with the traditional Panoramas, does not celebrate any extraordinary or uncommon fact, but the roughness of everyday life and the transformation of the urban spaces. They are Panoramas of our time that show us the dynamics of contemporary spaces, intensely linked to the movements of capital and its interests.

In these works, the space-time arrangements associate more intensely with the physical spaces, the virtual environments, and the subject’s movements, thus configuring a second degree timescape. There is a degree of mixture between real and virtual, considerably more intense than the telematic works that we pointed out previously. When we enter the cylinders composed of virtual images, we have the feeling that the “cylinder-screen” transformed into one of the virtual cylinders. Our actions intensely impact on the real surrounding and on the virtual environment, as if they were entwined, overlapped. This occurs especially when we are experiencing “Place-Ruhr”, whose moving images increase the feeling of connection between the virtual and the real. Thus, by rotating the platform, we see our physical space appropriate the virtual environment, creating a passage between both domains. This is precisely why we consider these works by Shaw as second degree timescapes: it is a situation of encounter and passage between the real and the virtual that associates the real space-time with the virtual one.

We could still point out an intermediate situation between the first and the second degree timescapes, with works that are structured having the dynamism of the physical space of the city as the main axis. Artistic projects such as “Poétrica” (2003), by Giselle Beiguelman, associate the city spaces with the use of high definition light panels, used for publicity, that received messages sent through the internet and from cell phones.

“Poétrica” generates a connection between distinct temporalities and the spaces near and far, like the telematic works; however, it is structured with a higher degree of complexity due to the use of mobile communication devices associated with the internet and the multiplicity of the urban space (Figure 41). According to Beiguelman, works such as “Poétrica” “deal with situations in which the entries are made volatile, the interfaces multiply and fragment the reception in electronic surfaces connected to telecommunication networks” (BEIGUELMAN, 2005, p.168) [2 ]. In this operation the artist ends up creating and depicting hybrid territories among technologies, subjects, and the city.

In “Poétrica” it was possible to send messages by SMS, WAP, or through the internet, which were then converted into non-phonetic sources (dings and system sources) and transmitted simultaneously to the three panels placed in the city of São Paulo, between Paulista, Consolação and Rebouças avenues, places of intense flow of people. In addition to that, the images were resent online through webcams, replicated in other devices (cell phones, palm tops, computers), and stored on the project’s website. After sending a message, it was possible to receive a confirmation and the date and time of the transmission. The teleintervention, which is how Beiguelman describes “Poétrica”, was available from October 14 to November 08, 2003 and also unfolded in an installation at Galeria Vermelho (Figure 42), where it was possible to see the projections of the webcams bringing real-time images of the panels, and naturally it was also possible to send text messages.

All this space-time network proposed by Beiguelman in her project results in the association and crossing of the most distinct temporalities, passing through the real and the virtual and creating clear approximations between the spaces where the images are exhibited and the place from which the messages are sent. It seems that Giselle Beiguelman expands the modes of connection and interconnection between these spaces and times, provoking an alignment around the vector of present time and through a random place, given that the location of whoever sends the messages is not important.

The reception time of the messages is in the traffic and in the codified messages, exposed in the public space of the city. The impacts are not on the immediate surroundings of whoever is involved with the work; they create a situation of overlapping between spaces and times in the exhibitions in the public space and, especially, when the images are resent via webcam. In this situation, the space-time arrangement impacts both on the real and on the virtual, but in a very different way, given that the space is organized in the mixture between the city and its flows, the internet, and the possible connections by mobile devices.

In addition to that, as a consequence of proposing the use of these mobile communication devices, Giselle Beiguelman brings the work to a context that is closer to everyday life, creating a situation of involvement with messages, codes, and languages in the fluidity of the city and its other temporalities. Because the space-time relationships that develop in the real and in the virtual impact on each other in such an open, smooth, and contaminated way, they end up in an intermediate situation between first and second degree timescapes, associating elements and features of both, staying between the two degrees.

Differently from Shaw, who delimited the space of interaction with “Place: Ruhr”, creating from there the passages between that space and the virtual one generating an intense process of immersion, Beiguelman removes the place from its geographic definition in non-synchronic times that overlap. On the other hand, like the telematic works, “Poétrica” associates actions that reverberate at a distance. In this situation, the project is placed in this area between the first and the second degree timescapes.

The third and most intense degree of timescapes occur with more frequency in those works structured in the field of augmented reality. These are works that seem to effectively merge the physical space that we experience with the power of the virtual environments and also of the interactions at a distance. They create even more intense situations of passage between real and virtual, providing even more effective intersections between the actions in the real and physical space of the surrounding and those of the virtual space, given that our actions change and impact on both contexts. “Can you see me now?”, the “construction-game” by the English group Blast Theory, seems to have taken the schemes of passage between the real and the virtual to the limit, making it a great example for us to see the generation of the third degree timescapes.

The work is configured first with structural elements typical of the game environment, but it puts them back in a hybrid form, by associating, not only games of distinct genres, but also the urban space and its digital representations available online.

The work is structured essentially around the chase between virtual and real players. Blast Theory even uses a special terminology to differentiate them. The real players are called “runners”; they are those who chase. The virtual players, those who are scattered around the world and participate in the game through the interface available on the internet, are called “players”. Although it may seem just like a terminology, naming them “runners” and “players” also seems to emphasize the passages between real and virtual, since it escapes a very obvious dichotomy between real and virtual, which emphasizes the sharing of the same space, in spite of the different forms of presence.

The players move in a simulation of the real space, available online, while the runners dislocate through the physical space apparently running after nobody, since it is impossible to see the virtual players without an access to a handheld computer with wireless internet connection, radio system and GPS. What is enabled here is a look and a form of perception totally connected to technology; a perception enabled by the intense associations with the machinic and the technological environment.
The game ends when the runners catch the players. The form of capture is a photograph of the physical and real place, where that “mediated pluripresence” was. The photo seems to become an evidence of encounters between two distinct forms of presence, web-territory that provides the encounter between real and virtual.
The devices used expand the physical space for the runners, transforming it into a hybrid territory between real and virtual, the domain of augmented reality. The work mobilizes a group of temporal relations that oscillate between a deferred time and the uchronic time of the eventualities in spaces tensioned between the physicality of the real space and its virtualization on the internet.

The territory of which the players and the runners are part becomes a mixture, a border area between the real and the virtual instantly established in that present time. The work lasts as long as the game lasts, that is, the time that the runners take to catch the “mediated pluripresences” of the players, with the photos of the empty places. Real and virtual intersect in the duration of the present time of the distant actions mixed with the local actions of the runners. The photo of the empty place, “present-past” time, gathers the temporalities of the physical space and the deferred time of the interaction at a distance. This photo also becomes the temporal imminence of an encounter between a real presence and a virtualized one – mediated pluripresence – given that the player is far from there, from those geographical coordinates, but acts intensely in that territory.

For the player, the space-time web becomes even more elastic because the time of the place from which he interacts also falls upon these temporalities. It does not matter where the player is, or whether it is day or night, because the time is aligned around the physical space through which the runners transit. However, the sense of immersion provided by the work transcends the machinic limits, especially because the group of strategies that Blast Theory uses to configure the work point to even more complex relations, involving subjectivity, memory, and the human reference, which moves with the avatars.

In this context, a paradoxical “remote proximity” emerges, generated by the interactions between players and runners and in the relations between the remote physical space, the online representation, and the player’s immediate surroundings. These three different types of spatiality, intersected and aligned by the present time, create a space-time arrangement that cut them transversally like the third degree timescapes, especially because the nature of the passages and the contaminations between real and virtual space-time are very intense. The actions, in contrast with the second degree timescapes, impact on both sides, creating situations of exchange, interaction, and communication that enable decision in the real space of the city and in the online representation. In “Can you see me now?” the participants are much more immerse in the border area between the real and the virtual.

There still are some peculiarities in “Can you see me now?” that deserve attention. The players can exchange text messages through the available interface and even send messages to the runners. In turn, the runners exchange information and capture strategies by radio that can be heard by the players, which in some way can facilitate the players’ escapes and movements. This situation, in which audio is available and messages are exchanged, places players and runners in a different way in the real-virtual space of the work., This strategy results in a higher degree of difficulty in the game and increases the forms of presence and interaction. The runners are exposed to all the difficulties of real space, such as traffic, which, in spite of hindering very much the runners’ actions, does not appear in the virtual representation of the city. In the same way, getting tired from running around the real space or getting lost in the city are situations which are not part of the players’ experience. With that, although the real city and its virtual online representation are very similar, they are located in different dimensions and also enable different forms of presence and experience, which are gathered in this hybrid space of real and virtual that the work provides.

In addition to these peculiarities, there is another situation elaborated by Blast Theory that results in yet another temporal confrontation to the work, an even more complex one. Right after registering on the website, the player needs to answer the question: Is there someone who you haven’t seen in a long time and still think about? Because of its simplicity, this sentence does not even seem to make much sense in a first moment, given that it does not interfere in the development of the game. However, it induces the relationship between presence and absence – central point of the conceptual construction of the work – to require memory, the relations, and subjectivation processes. The answer to the question only shows in the final moments of the game. In the moment of catch, the runner says this person’s name – absent in time and in space – on the microphones, allowing the player to hear it, thus creating an intense connection with memory and its temporalities, stimulating us to think about the relation between presence and absence in a more intense way. With that, the work starts also to be associated with memory, giving an unexpected subjective dimension to these temporalities that emerge between the real and the virtual spaces, a point that we will return to later.

With that, in spite of the distance that separates the players from each other and from the runners, the time of the game is similar to one temporality only and to one discontinuous space only, shared between real and virtual. The space overlap, considering that the user’s space in the case of “Can you see me now?”, as Stockburger showed us, is the intense fusion between the online representation and the urban space, favors the emergence of this discontinuous and heterogeneous territory that is established in the moment of the experimentation of the work. In this situation, there is an effective rearrangement between the representation of the space and the representational space. Both are open to the actions of the game, but they gather and form one space typical of the construction-game. The representational space of the internet only works if there is the tension provoked by the presence of the real players in the physical space of the city. The representation of space, i.e. the formal group of relations that structure the game, happens so as to introduce that which is typical of the game as well as of the city. With this, the work assumes the open temporalities of chance, typical of the urban space, but also associated with the space-time of the games and of the internet itself. The fact that the players can communicate via keyboard and can still listen to the runners’ strategies creates a connection among all these participants who, in spite of being physically distant, are strongly united by the space-time produced by the work.

The context produced by “Can you see me now?” generates third degree timescapes. Because of the way in which the construction-game was assembled, the mixture between real and virtual makes the actions taken by one impact directly and intensively on the other. The intensity and the dynamism with which these repercussions between the real and the virtual occur create an informational territory during the time of the game, like an overlap with the real physical space, a web-territory. This way, the runners and the players go from one side to the other, act in the virtual and provoke a direct repositioning in the real and vice-versa. The runners experience this informational territory in a state of immersion that effectively mixes the real space of their surroundings and the virtual. The players, on the other hand, form a territory that brings the several points of the world where they physically are, closer, by accessing the internet. Thus, a space is created that gathers the players, scattered around the world, and the runners, in the space of the city, aligned by the present time, in this case, the “time of the game”. The virtual players’ actions do not directly impact on the physical surrounding where they are playing, but do impact on the physical space where the runners are, given that the strategies are arranged through the text messages exchanged between them.

The space in “Can you see me now?” becomes one time only, real and virtual, an effective overlap, given the speed in which the repercussions occur on both sides. It is not simply about acting at a distance, such as in the universe of the telematic works. It is about creating a space-time situated half-way between the real and the virtual, which includes the players’ actions, decisions, and dislocations. All that shows us that the work by Blast Theory produces a third degree timescape given that, linked by the work, real and virtual players transit and act between real and virtual. In this situation, the borderline between real and virtual becomes nearly a membrane, favoring all sorts of passages, at any moment, associating with this spaces and times of the real and the virtual.

In this context, the work provides numberless situations of passage between real and virtual and repositions the dynamics of the presences in an expanded web-territory that associates the city and the internet in ways of interaction that impact on the work as a whole. The temporalities of the city and the internet, as well as the time of the game and the discontinuous territories, are intersected by present time and the space-time arrangement that is experienced in “Can you see me now?”, bring vestiges of all the space-time regimes that are at stake in the work. This way, this third degree timescape relates to a profusion of distinct and distant times and spaces that are aligned around the vector of present time. Since they unfold into the city, the chances and the lack of control of the urban landscape are, in some way, incorporated to the space-time provided by the work.

In this situation, if disorientation is a condition for the existence of the landscape, as in Lyotard’s epigraph that starts this chapter, in “Can you see me now?” what disorients and unveils these new space-time arrangements such as the timescapes is the possibility of intensively experiencing this borderline situation of intense passage and contamination between the real and the virtual. If we dislocate, like in “Can you see me now?”, between an expanded space – web-territory, open to all space-time relations typical to the clash with the real, in this case, the urban space – and the dynamic updates of the virtual, we experience a third degree timescape. However, what makes this space-time arrangement, enabled by this work, dislocate us even more is the requirement of memory. Claiming a past time, totally detached from the present time of the work, open to all the creative fables that allow us to dislocate through other dimensions in the space-time relations linked to the subjective field – that is an important point of the web of multiple times enabled by “Can you see me now?”.

When the players are required to say the name of the person whom they have not met in a long time, but that they still remember, we see an expansion of the space-time to find, in the disorientations of the memory, the echoes of a space-time plotted also with the memory, besides the space-time relations that derive from the passages between real and virtual. To recall from memory, like in “Can you see me now?”, is to enter the territory of the dynamic constructions, which are constantly updated by the subjectivities in a total lack of control of relations that can emerge from this person’s name. With that, the work increases even more the intensity of the timescape, equipping it with an unexpected and strong tie with the subjectivities, with the memories and with the life stories of each one of the players. In this specific case, it is a timespace that, in addition to keeping traces of the space-time relations that are at stake, is opened to another dimension that reveals the powers of memory, of the past time becoming present and updating itself.

In the timescapes, the divisions are not so rigid, even because we are at the hybrid territory of media art and there are many and frequent alterations that will always ensure works with other forms of relation between real and virtual. Other temporalities can emerge, as well as intermediate areas between the degrees of intensity. With the definition of timescapes, we only propose a schematic form to point out these new space-time arrangements that we currently experience, as well as the form through which they relate. However, we know that the media art production, as well as the way in which technology slides into social life, is very dynamic and frequently refuses systems that are too closed and definitive. With the timescapes, the objective is to claim new looks and expressions that serve as a basis for future developments to expand the discussions and the debates around the productive approximations between technologies and the social life in the articulations with art.

NOTAS

1. Free translation from Portuguese.

2. Free translation from Portuguese.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eduardo de Jesus graduated in Social Communication (PUC-Minas), holds a master in Communication (UFMG) and a doctor degree from ECA-USP. He is professor of the Communication and Arts Faculty of PUC-Minas, where he a member of CEIS - Center for Experimentation in Image and Sound. He is also a board member of the Cultural Association Videobrasil.