UK artist tests the bounds of intimate space

Two people in the separate rooms are shown on the screen together, very realistically as if they were in each other’s physical presence.

It is explicable modern art. That is, art for the Internet age. The brainchild of British media artist Paul Sermon, the exhibit, Headroom, begs the question “what does it mean to ‘be’ somewhere when we spend so much of our time now in cyberspace?”

The fact that there is so much room in cyberspace, which is represented by the distance between the individuals on the monitor, Sermon says, is juxtaposed by the cramped environment of the small “bedroom.”

“If you go in and think ‘this person is too close,’ that’s what I want,” he explains. “I want people to think it wasn’t made by an artist but made by someone who wanted to escape this space alone.”

And, naturally, the Web provides that escape.

“We are going to this new space of intimacy,” Sermon added. “Between our physical presence and that in the Internet, we find ourselves asking ‘Do I exist here or this elaborative space.’”

Sermon also refers to Roy Ascott’s 1990 essay “Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace,” in which Ascott addressed a common concern that technology would dehumanize art, a greater concern 15 years later when one could ask would our disembodied meetings in cyberspace threaten the way we feel about each other.

The analogy between “solitude presence in the bedroom space below and the divine telepresent aspirations in the Internet space above,” Sermon says, also reflects his experiences in Taipei, following the theme of how people escape in the city.

“I wanted to come to Taiwan with a blank canvas rather than a project I had already done,” he says. “I wanted to encounter a site-specific environment.”

After reviewing a number of potential sites, many of which Sermon said inspired him, he settled on the Xinyi Public Assembly Hall. With its deconstructed steel and glass rooms, it would seem “Headroom” really couldn’t be placed anywhere else.

Sermon adds that the surrounding environment, from small shack houses, vegetable gardens, Taipei 101 and the Taipei World Trade Center, only fueled the motif of juxtaposition.

“You walk around here and you get the feeling that something is happening,” Sermon notes. “This area is very exciting.”

Generally even, Taipei “constantly” offers many “ways of escape” with its KTVs, shopping and other “intimate spaces.”

Sermon, who won the Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica in 1991, works in the field of “telematic arts.” His “Telematic Dreaming 05” was part of “Climax — The Highlight of Arts Electronica” at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung.

“Headroom,” organized by the British Council, Taipei Culture Foundation and Taipei Artist Village, is on display at the Xinyi Public Assembly Hall from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. until April 20. The artist will be available on Saturday, April 15 at 3:30 p.m.

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