Stock Market Skirt and New Directions
by
 Nancy Paterson, Still from Coppelia video, a dance/robotics project that utilizes ORAD virtual set technology - Photo: Nancy Paterson In the early 1990's, I began working with laserdisc technology and custom-designed microcontrollers to develop interactive projects such as Bicycle TV, The Machine in the Garden, and The Meadow. As this technology became more commonplace in the mid 90's, my interest turned to Internet-based installations as the technology had evolved significantly since I first went online in 1982. Stock Market Skirt, [1] a project which I began to work on in 1995, was actually conceived long before the technology was available to realize it. The concept of controlling the length of a woman's dress by referencing stock market quotes in real time could only be put into practice as the internet evolved to supply data which I could access. Originally, Stock Market Skirt was comprised of a BASIC program which used Toronto Stock Exchange historical data which had been donated to the project. With the transformation of the Internet from an academic resource to more mainstream entertainment and commercial applications, it was my expectation that it would only be a matter of time before online trading became accessible online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In 1995 when I began working on Stock Market Skirt, the only financial resources available online were expensive proprietary subscription services such as Reuters, Star Data and Bloomberg. By 1998 when Stock Market Skirt went public, I had my choice of sites which provided stock quotes, from markets across the globe. Stefaan Van Ryssen, in a Leonardo Digital Review, points out that "this work of course refers to the theories of Desmond Morris and Helmut Gaus that women's clothing follows economic activity. In times of crisis and deflation, hemlines are lowered and colours disappear, in times of growth and at the height of a business cycle, skirts (and pants) are getting shorter and clothes more colourful. At the same time, the work comments on the presence of women as object and consumer in the `real' world, while men are absent, hidden by technology and steering the economy rather than undergoing it." [2]
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Stock Market Skirt works on many levels, as a cyberfeminist
fashion statement, and as the embodiment of the emerging intelligence of
the Internet. Instantly, several message are imprinted on the viewer's
subconscious.
This project has the potential to be interactive with the global flow of information by responding to a dynamic feed of data. We are not merely voyeurs, watching the hemline quiver, rise and fall. A viewer might influence the mediawork by making a call to their broker, to buy (or sell) shares in whatever company the skirt is currently tracking. Or, this might be accomplished through online trading. If the stock or composite being tracked is bought/sold as a result of automatic trade execution, then Stock Market Skirt becomes interactive with the flow of data within the Internet itself rather than being interactive through the internet as a pipeline or conduit. The completion of Stock Market Skirt allowed me to pursue another interest, with the development of a fully navigable, multi-storied 3D environment titled: The Library. [3] Whereas Stock Market Skirt required relatively low bandwidth, The Library was at the opposite end of the bandwidth spectrum. A common theme, however, was the re-purposing of online data; in The Library, for example, a constantly updated (every 5 min.) satellite image of the earth's surface from space (NASA website) is retrieved and used as the texture map for a rotating sphere (world globe) which is the centrepiece in my 3D environment. Such applications hint at the promise of the Internet, for true interactivity and the symmetrical exchange of data. Further expanding my artistic practice, I have recently produced a short video for BRAVO! titled Coppelia. [4] Produced as Artist in Residence at the School for Communication Arts, Seneca@York, (Seneca College of Applied Arts & Technology, Toronto), this dance/robotics project utilizes ORAD virtual set technology. This was an opportunity for me to experiment with choreography and collaboration on the development of an audio sound track. I am currently developing a performance project which will further explore the potential of Seneca@York's Vicon motion-capture technology in conjunction with the ORAD. Another project currently under development is MULTI: Multiple User Laser Table Interface, which will continue to develop the 3D LIBRARY environment as content for a collaborative multi-user tool. Partners for this development are Dr. Wolfgang Stuerzlinger (Computer Science, York University) and Dr. Jennifer Jenson (Education, York University).
Notes: 1. Nancy Paterson, Stock Market Skirt -- http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Stock/stock.html
2. Stefaan Van Ryssen
3. Nancy Paterson, The Library
4.
Nancy Paterson, Coppelia |