Seeing I
at Ars Electronica, Linz
Mark Farid
Part of arebyte 2019 programme Home
2 - 9 September during the Ars Electronica Festival: Out of the Box - The Midlife Crisis of the Digital Revolution, 2019
Ars-Electronica-Straße 1, 4040 Linz, Austria
Mark Farid, Seeing I, 2019. Installation view, Ars Electronica, Linz. Image: Mila Lewis.
arebyte Gallery are pleased to announce Seeing I, taking place as a residency and trial run exhibition at Ars Electronica, 2019. Seeing I is a psychological art experiment that examines the implications of surveillance technologies on our experience, and questions how much of the individual is an inherent personality and how large a portion of the individual is conditioned through a cultural identity.
For seven consecutive days, British artist Mark Farid is living in the exhibition space. In the morning he puts on on a virtual reality headset and watches the first person point-of-view perspective of seven different people (the ‘Other’), from the moment they get out of bed in the morning, to the moment they go to sleep in the evening.
Each day, Farid watches a different person’s life; eating when they eat, and sleeping when they sleep. Otherwise, Farid is free to do as he pleases within the exhibition space, so long as the headset remains on.
Each night, after the Other goes to sleep, Farid will take off the VR headset and speak to the projects’ clinical psychologist, Dr. Tamara Russell, through a microphone and speakers in the room. On the final night of the residency, a public conversation between Farid and Dr. Russell will take place in the exhibition space. This will be the first time Farid will have seen a real human being for seven days.
About Seeing I, 2020
Inspired by psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981), and artist Josh Harris’ Quiet: We Live in Public (1999), Seeing I uses new technologies to examine constructions of the self in the 21st Century.
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For 24-hours a day, for 14 days, artist Mark Farid will wear a virtual reality headset, seeing and hearing only what one person (the Other) sees and hears for two weeks. The Other is an individual who will record a continuous 220x165° HD panorama of all their immediate sights and sounds, facilitated by a headband fitted with miniature camera lenses and microphones. Farid will witness every waking moment of the Other’s life; from brushing their teeth, to their commute, their work and social life, and their most intimate moments with their partner, family, and friends.
Seeing I will confine Farid to a gallery space, subject to the simulated life of the Other. With Farid unable to hear his own voice or see his own hands for two weeks, and with the only stimulation being what the Other sees and hears, how will the constant stream of artificial sights and sounds start to affect Farid’s movement, mannerisms, and personality? How will his indirect relationship with the Other start to affect his own rationale? Without agency to determine all conversations, actions or any expression of self, will Farid start to see himself as the Other, or will his own sense of self be enough to deter significant change?
Seeing I has been conceived and produced by artist Mark Farid and is commissioned by arebyte Gallery in partnership with Sundance Institute, The Mindfulness Centre of Excellence, Ravensbourne University and Imagine Science Film Festival.
EXHIBITION CREDITS
Mark Farid, Artist, Producer, and Subject
Nimrod Vardi, Funder and Co-Producer
John Ingle, Film Director
Tadej Vindis, Development of the custom built recorder - System Design and Project Management
Frank Davies , Development of the custom built recorder - System Design and Software Development
Drew Richards - Development of the custom built recorder - Prototyping, Manufacture and 3D Design
Dr. Tamara Russell, Clinical Psychologist
Petri Luukkainen, Film Director
Carl Smith, Live Biometric Research
Mark Ransley, Live Biometric Research
Nick Lambert, Live Biometric Research
Rebecca Edwards, Curator, arebyte Gallery
READ THE EXHIBITION BOOKLET
“One of many aspects of this project that really interests me, is the connection between the reality which is being experienced by Mark and the Other. If I was able to create an identical situation for Mark within the Gallery: temperature, touch, smell, it would be a bad piece of work, because what is happening is exactly linear. What we call Mark right now, is trying to find itself, and this is exactly between the real space and time we are in; everything else is projected into his mind. This must be in collision, and once it is, then we will have something very interesting. Here, as an image and as a situation, any attempt to put Mark into the exact situation where temperature, smell, touch etc. are the same as the Other’s, makes this a boring scientific experiment, but where it becomes Art, is because of the creation of this friction and discontinuity.”