SciArt Magazine - All Issues February 2016 | Page 28

SPOTLIGHT

Wrestling
with the Real:
the Art of Ken Goldberg
By Joe Ferguson
Contributor
Traditionally, philosophers wrestled with profound questions of existence, while scientists seemed content to
measure, test, and calculate. As the domains of science
and technology grew, however, questions about the fabric of what we perceive as reality expanded beyond the
linguistic inquiries of philosophy and landed in the hands
of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. With the
development of the Internet, the conundrum of what is
real increased exponentially—a fact made irrevocably clear
in 1995 with a landmark piece of interactive Internet art by
engineer and artist Ken Goldberg.

Ken Goldberg. Photo credit: Eric Rorer.

In Telegarden, thousands of users logged on through dialup modems to employ a telerobotic arm to plant and water
seeds in a seemingly real but distant physical space.
With this piece, the Internet became more than just a
communication technology or voyeuristic pursuit—participants could interact with technology in ways that affected
the real world. An issue with projected virtual environments, however, is that they lack proof of their existence.
In other words, the viewer is left to wonder, “Is this real?”
When viewers confronted Goldberg about the existence of
his artwork, he realized a fusion of science and philosophy
was needed to answer their questions. He ended up coining the term ‘telepistemology’ and then editing a book on
the subject.
Goldberg remains fascinated with the essential epistemological question of reality, and has addressed it in other
works such as Bloom, Mori, and the upcoming Wow and
Flutter. In these works he employs telepresence—the idea
that something is happening live in one place, but is visualized in another. Seismic data from the Hayward fault line
is converted to animations that can be viewed in a gallery,
museum, or online. Though viewers are told the animations represent live data, they are left with no real proof
that the data is live or that it exists at all. These works
raise important questions about the veracity of mediated
information in the Internet age.

Mori (1999-ongoing). Internet-based earthwork. By Ken Goldberg, Randall Packer, Gregory Kuhn, and Wojciech Matusik.
Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jared Charney

Goldberg’s most recent work is a departure from his
high–tech legacy. In Body–in–White he invokes ancient

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SciArt in America February 2016