Displaced Perspectives 2.0
"Displaced Perspectives 2.0" (1986 & 2011) by Graham Smith is a teleguidance system.
Displaced Perspectives; archive photo: Graham Smith, 1986
Displaced Perspectives allows viewers to explore distant environments through the video eyes of a remotely controlled robot. It is a teleguidance system which will allow participants in Salerno or Paris to explore a site in Toronto by directing a small video camera mounted on a remotely-controlled robot, which transmits real-time digitized images via the Macintosh computer "MacVision" system.
This ability to see, and control a machine, across the Atlantic is the most visible part of the piece, yet conceptually it is only a surface element. The true power of the piece lies in its definition of communication as an interactive explorative process which results in the construction of a 3-dimensional mental model. The robot uses the same scanning process people use when entering any new space; they look all over and build up a 3-dimensional model from many different perspectives. It is this definition of communication: many small pieces making up something greater than the whole, which lies at the heart of this piece. (Graham Smith, SAI Brochure, 1986)
