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April 4, 2003     
     Disabled Runners    Out on a Limb    Hooking Up    Body Art    Keeping NYC Out    Off Stage  


Images and text by Gabriel Rodríguez-Nava

Spying and being spied on. That's the game played at Remote Lounge. The live feed coming from a 100 cameras around the club is also trasmitted in several TV screens

There's an episode in the Jetsons in which wife Jane receives an early morning call. Her face and hair still in disarray, she cleverly pulls out a mask with a more suitable image of herself before taking the call. She needed the mask because telephoning for the Jetsons involved a screen on which one sees the person talking on the other line. Today, we call this videoconferencing, and in New York City's East Village, in a club appropriately named Remote Lounge, the concept is better known as "telepresence."

At Remote, patrons can satisfy both their voyeuristic and exhibitionistic inclinations. The club is loaded with 60 miniature video cameras and 100 monitors and displays showing practically every inch of the lounge, except of course, restrooms. But the real fun is at the "Cocktail Consoles" where one can sit and view the live feed coming from each of the cameras in the club. But that's not all, the consoles are equipped with a joystick that allows for camera tilting and panning - even the Jetsons didn't have this. There's a smaller screen where messages can be displayed, a button to say hello to people at other stations, another button to take a picture of anyone on a screen, another to ask for more drinks, and of course, a telephone receiver that allows communication between consoles.

Video art gives even more media texture to Remote Lounge.

"It's like, I have my eyes all over the place, without, you know, moving," said Stephen Deutsch, 29, a designer and artist living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In saying this, Deutsch inadvertently echoes a central idea in Marshal McLuhan's book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Men. In this book McLuhan explores the notion of global communications systems, and all technologies in general, as inorganic extensions of the human body. In this sense, phone cables could be seen as our global nervous system, satellites like our giant outer space ears and eyes, our different modes of transportation as attachments to our legs, and so on.

Similar ideas have been developed in the realm of architecture. For instance, architectural theorist Mark Wigley has stated that "the successive extension of the body transform the space the body occupies. Indeed, they collapse the distinction between body and space" (DEpRIVAT Symposium, 1998.) In this light, architecture can also project itself as a "prosthetic" evolution of the human body.

Yet despite the fact that Remote Lounge's website mentions that "the cameras act as the 'remote eyeballs,' or the visual prosthetics, of the bar customers," Jordan Parnass, the club's architect, is reluctant to consider his project as an example of "prosthetic architecture." "I feel that prosthetic may not be the correct term, since it implies a "replacement" rather than "enhancement" to the natural sensory perceptions of the body," he said in an online interview. (Click here to read complete interview.)

One of many remote electronic eyes.
Prosthetic or not, Remote Lounge still goes further than any pair of eyes and it certainly lends itself to bodily metaphors. The telephone receiver works both as mouth and ear extensions, while the buttons for sending messages on the screens in other Cocktail Consoles help to extend the more psychological function of flirting.

Still, Remote leaves one wondering why in a city already overloaded with television screens, cell phones, Internet stations and all kinds of multimedia, people still find it more attractive to interact and meet via electronic extensions rather than through straight-forward personal contact.

Natalie Kocsis, 26, an assistant art director for Home magazine and a recurring visitor to Remote, said that meeting people this way "is not as intimidating. You have this protective screen in front of you." And just in case the console is not enough of a shield for her shyness, Kocsis makes sure to bring other gadgets to put between her and the spying camera on top of the console: fake nerdy eyeglasses, a plastic toy that's a bizarre breed between a dog and pistol, a squeaky noise-making baby and a paper pad and marker to "broadcast" requests to the DJ (whose booth is also covered with screens with live feeds from the club.) At the same time, Kocsis admits without much hesitation that she belongs to the exhibitionist band of clients at Remote.

Exhibitionist at play: molding the medium at will by doing his thing, on-screen.
In his book Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives, sociologist Todd Gitlin exposes the different ways people navigate the present-day media overflow. In an online conversation he held with Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows, he distinguished six strategies. Of the six, one could be said to belong to many of those attracted to Remote Lounge: the "exhibitionist." In contrast with the "secessionist," who opts as often as possible to unplug from the media torrent, the exhibitionist fights back by getting on-screen and diving even deeper into the media whirl. In between these two extremes of navigating, Gitlin distinguishes between the fan, the critic, the paranoid, theironist, the jammer, and the abolitionist. (Click here to go to the complete discussion in the Atlantic Online)

Lori Johnson, a 30-year-old massage therapist, agreed that the gadgets at Remote made it easier for her to meet people. It's "very voyeuristic," she said. "As a person who would never go up to a guy, this allows me to talk to them first. You might end up clicking on a mental level instead of a physical level. It might be someone you wouldn't talk to otherwise." On the other hand, she pointed to some disadvantages. Compared to the online dating services, no profiles are available here, so she couldn't know if a certain man was gay, married (or both). But perhaps more disturbing to her, was her image on the screen. As she complained about how weird her eyes and teeth looked, she said, "It's true, the camera adds 20 pounds. We look horrible. They should get better cameras."

But this might not be necessary. After all, those on-screen are present, and only a few feet away. And when it comes to dating, no extension or prosthesis for human contact will be able to replace the real thing.



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Click on image to read an online conversation with Remote's architect:


Click below to go to an online discussion about media saturation with sociologist Todd Gitlin and Atlantic Monthly's
James Fallows