The living

Work in progress

Introduction

This page presents the performance-based net artwork The_Living (1997-1998) by artist Debra Solomon. In 2019, The_Living was included in LI-MA’s Digital Canon project as part of twenty works that had lasting influence on digital art and culture in the Netherlands. In 2022, LI-MA carried out the research and conservation of The_Living. The preservation team received the personal archive of Debra Solomon in Fall 2022, followed by an interview with the artist in early 2023. Rather than re-enacting the work in the original set-up, the artist and the preservation team agreed that activating the work with a critical reflection of its conceptual aspects is a better way of preserving the memory and legacy of The_living. The Wiki presentation contributes to this goal of critical research and reflection on the work, with publishing as a preservation strategy. The structure of this web presentation follows the model of another case study researched by LI-MA and by Dušan Barok, Naked on Pluto (2010-2013, Marloes de Valk, Aymeric Mansoux, Dave Griffiths). This web presentation is written by Haitian Ma, with input from Gaby Wijers, Joost Dofferhoff, Claudia Roeck, Olivia Brum, and the artist Debra Solomon.

Work

The_living is a performance-based net artwork carried out by artist Debra Solomon (US/NL) between 1997 and 1998. It centered around the online life of the digi-persona ‘the_living’, with the artist as her flesh holder. The work is highly situationist, with the_living intervening in different chat rooms of an early video conferencing software CU-SeeMe without former notice. There, she would chat with other online users and live streamed moments of her life in unusual places, such as swimming pools, in Amsterdam canals and on the bike. These live performances often last throughout the day. The_living also had a website www.the-living.org, where the artist gave explanations of the work and displayed the various ‘Tamagotchi gifts’--animation and midi files she created—for her audiences.

After the year-long performance, the_living project continued to evolve in the form of installations, broadcasts and in-person tours until a complete shift in the artist’s practice in 2003. The website is no longer online and most of the digital files have been lost. The ephemeral lifespan of the work, however, does not veil its pioneering thrust in staging artistic intervention into the online public space, and critically reflecting on the blurring boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds at the early Internet age.

Art Historical Context

Driven by the fascination with the Internet as a communication network, the popularization of cyberpunk as a genre, and renewed demands from the Third-wave feminist movements, the late 1990s saw the creation of digi-persona and avatars by female media/net artists in the Netherlands and abroad. They share common themes such as the exploration of online identities and the creation of imaginative narratives that entwined the physical, virtual and psychological realms of human existence.

Artist Practice

After graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie audiovisual department, Debra Solomon started producing a few installation and web-based artworks that interrogated the borderline between the Internet and the physical space. This led to the creation of the_living project in 1997, anticipated by the artist as a year-long online performance. The work also took on a physical iteration between 1999 and 2000, where the artist went on a series of tours across the United States with expanded installations. In 2003, Solomon’s practice underwent a radical shift from the digital to the material sphere. She currently works in the field of food culture and multispecies urbanism, maintaining a fascination to working in public space settings.

Quote from Artist

“The video image of the_living is created by the artist who has taken it upon herself to lend her physical appearance and live moments to the digi-persona she creates.” –Debra Solomon, from the archived website www.the-living.org

Functionality and Concept

Situationist

What distinguishes The_living from other net art projects of the time lies in the ‘intervening’ gesture of her online performance. Without former notice, the digi-persona entered uninvited into different chatrooms (‘reflectors’) hosted by other users in the video conferencing software CU-SeeMe. This intervening and hijacking gesture made the work highly situationist, with the performance developing from the interaction and responses from her audiences. It also meant that audiences of The_living were often unaware that their interaction with the digi-persona constituted part of an art project. As the artist also mentioned, the_living’s presence often produced mixed reactions of confusion, surprise and occasional irritation for other users in the chatroom.

[Screenshot from PARK4DTV/promotion trailer of the_living that features the_living’s desktop environment]

Durational

Different from those performances that unfold in the form of a one-time spectacle, the performance of the_living was durational, with the artist often being online for up to 14 hours a day. “I wanted to produce an imaginary of this promise of what tech was going to be, but actually I'm the one who was the most caught up in it.”

[Image of Debra Solomon’s workstation, RKD]

Technological Optimism

The artwork manifested a considerable extent of technological optimism with the Internet medium. In the beginning of the project, the artist imagined the_living to embody 'the dream of total connectivity' that completely blurred the physical and the online world. With the_living, Solomon had hoped to experience the ‘future’ presented to her in the popularized science fiction and to create a seamless experience between the physical and the virtual.

Disillusionment & Departure

The reception of the artwork within the net art scene in the Netherlands varied. In the beginning of the project, the artwork received considerable media coverage and visibility in exhibitions. In 1998, the artwork was featured in the AVRO Digitale Diva's programme. Together with the two other works Nara Zoyd by Yvonne le Grand and Mouchette by Martine Neddam, the_living was considered one of the pivotal works reflecting on identities on the Internet. That said, most exhibition renderings of the artwork were unable to showcase the situationist and performative aspect of the work, and only presented a flat representation of the_living.