Skip to content
Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00265
- Thesis Title
- Surrogate Self
- Author
- Peter W. Coppin
- E-mail
- petercoppin AT gmail.com
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Master of Fine Arts
- Year
- 1999
- Number of Pages
- 74
- University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Thesis Supervisor
- Simon Penny
- Supervisor e-mail
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Steven Kurtz, Bryan Rogers
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Fine Arts (Electronic and Time Based Media)
- Copyright Ownership
- Peter Coppin
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- individual.utoronto.ca/coppin/cyborg_surragate_self.pdf
- Keywords
- telepresence, telepresence art, telerobot, robotics art, electronic media, cyborg, surragate self
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- Everyday life in turn-of-the-Millennium America depends on information networks connecting people at remote locations for activities that were previously carried out in person, such as working, socializing and shopping. These information networks reflect a suburb/city model of urban planning that is itself decentralized and dependent on information networks for normal operation. Peter Coppin is a product of the Dallas/Ft. Worth technosphere, a prime example of a decentralized city that requires mass use of information networks for its very existence. Peter’s life and educational experiences within that decentralized technosphere included time periods both with and without television, as well as employment in the product development department of an interactive television company. These factors influenced Peter to create work that attempts to explore and resolve the isolation engendered by urban sprawl. Graduate work in the School of Art at CMU consisted of six projects that attempted to create a system for remote interaction as a poetic resolution of this isolation. The culmination of this work, “Project Paradise,” used principles of remote human interaction that were developed over the previous five projects.