Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MEX), born 1967, conceptual artist and chemist, co-director of the media arts company T.S. T. based in Madrid. Will Bauer (CDN), born 1960, media artist, electrical engineer and composer. He is the inventor of GAMS, a 3-D tracker for control of media.

"The Trace" is a telepresence piece where real-time audiovisual events reconstruct the three-dimensional presence of two distant participants, so they can interact with each other. Two identical stations are interconnected; these can be in the same exhibition hall or in different cities. Each participant is given a GAMS wireless tracker which controls robot lamps, 3D graphics and positional sound in both local and remote stations. The local participant is followed by a floating ring projected on the ceiling of the station, and by two blue light beams which intersect at his or her sensor. Similarly, the presence of the remote participant can be inferred by the movements of a floating disc and of two white light beams which intersect at the location of the remote sensor. Audio samples are dynamically panned around 10 speakers to match the movements of the remote participant.

Participants know nothing about each other except for their relative 3-D movements and positions. "Telembodyment" happens when they share the same telematic coordinates by entering the other's representation. Telembodyment can be seen as a metaphor for those moments in which humans are inside other humans: physically, as in pregnancy, sex or surgery; or virtually, as in Bakhtin’s “intersubjectivity”, the holy communion’s “the body of Christ” and mr. Spock’s “Vulcan Mind-Meld”. Of course, participants may choose not to telembody. One of the motivating reasons to do this piece was to find out whether the lebensraum, the physical distance we are expected to keep from other people, is upheld within telematic systems.

Technical Background

HW: PC, Macintosh, GAMS, AV
SW: Artists' Proprietary