whatYouGive==whatYouGet is a 4 by 5 square meters room consisting of an interactive screen of a nude sequence and a line of clothes hangers with hidden sensors. One at a time, visitors are allowed into the room, where a screen shows a blank frame as a default display. Each visitor is required to take off a piece of clothing to start the sequence and it is up to him/her to “reveal” as much of the sequence as he/she is prepared to undress. The more clothes you take off, the more of nude images you see.
Exhibited at London Gallery West in 2007, whatYouGive==whatYouGet presented the intimate interplay of a viewer’s mind and body in a gallery space through the idea of role-reversal. Under full bright lighting in the space there is no place to hide; while you are watching the nude, it is also staring at you.
To see and to be seen is the core participation in this work; it employs the vulnerability of the viewer to negotiate with the set of rules to control the screen contents to a degree the viewer becomes uncomfortable. The challenge is not only placed at the interface between the participant mind/body and the technological system, but also the onlookers outside the room. An array of LEDs (on the outer wall) reveals the number of pieces of clothing the participant (inside the room) has taken off.
The Naked Truth: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals (2005) at Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria. Image from TATE MAgazine issue 5
Inspired by the relationship between action and reward of The Naked Truth: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals (2005), an exhibition at Leopold Museum in Vienna, where naked visitors were allowed to entry without charge. This simple analogy is applied into a feedback loop condition of whatYouGive==whatYouGet’s computer system, to play with the viewer’s digital mind. Hubert Dreyfus (2001) in Telepistemology writes that ‘what gives us our sense of being in direct touch with reality is that we bring about changes in the world and get perceptual feedback concerning what we have done.’ [1] The computer system takes the number of the viewer’s actions as parameter to control the intimate degree of the nude contents. The nude sequence starts of as a blank frame, a nude model appears with its back facing the viewer once a piece of clothing has been hung on a hanger. The model discloses more parts of its body embodying the nakedness of the viewer’s body as its own.
A participant in the middle of her viewing processes
A thin line between being “naked” and the “nude” can occur in the viewer’s consciousness through all the viewing processes. David Rimanelli (2005) made a distinction between the “naked” and the “nude”, found in TATE magazine issue 5. He writes that the word “nude” does not carry the same negative connotations as “naked”. ‘The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenceless body: the body re-formed.’ [2] In my installation, when the viewers become more exposed and aware of their own naked status, they can experience it as an exciting progress towards viewing the final visual sequence. That is the highest reward of seeing the full body of the nude model but may also involve a sense of self-awareness and identification not felt before.
On the other hand, if the viewers feel uncomfortable with their own nakedness in this private space, they can stop but won’t “earn” the rewards for undressing in full – ‘to be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the world implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition’ [3].
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[1] Dreyfus, Hubert, 2001. Telepistemology. In: Goldberg, Ken, The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet. London: The MIT Press, pp.57
[2] David Rimanelli, 2005. The Nude Stripped Bare. In TATE Magazine issue 2, Autumn 2005, pp.30-37
[3] Ibid