The enduring telematic vision of a coexistent third space

I have been continually producing telematic telepresent artworks since the 1990s but in recent years I am occasionally asked if my audiences respond differently today because of the ubiquity of Zoom. The short answer is no! These telepresent installations are everything that video chat is not. My telematic artworks have been and continue to be intimate phenomenological encounters between the self as other and another participant in a coexistent third space. Zoom, conversely, has condemned us to boxes of talking heads. Amongst others, my Telematic Vision (1993) installation is not merely concerned with networked communication, it is often produced between two adjacent rooms, as was recently the case for Topologies of the Real: Techne Shenzhen 2023. In this instance, the specular television image is the portal to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘extension of bodily synthesis’ and has more in common with Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha than it ever will with Zoom.