TELECOMEDY

I've always been intrigued by the relationship between art
and comedy. As art over the centuries, and especially
throughout this last one, has become less about the craft of
representation and more about the concept at the center of a
piece (with both form and content adjusting accordingly),
the last word on a work can often be summed up in the same
terms we apply to jokes: You get it or you don't.

But then there's a particular flavor of both art and comedy
not quite as formally structured as a Christo or "Two guys
walk into a bar...". Works along these lines set a tone,
tickle you here and there, and you laugh or nod along
without really knowing - or caring - why. In comedy, you
might think of Sandra Bernhard or Steven Wright; in art,
Heath Bunting serves as a delightful example.

Entering Heath Bunting's site via the front door
, you're reminded that, in terms
of form at least, an essential element of comedy is timing
(as in "it's all in the"). Very few of the very many pages
here exceed 3K, and for that alone, Bunting deserves some
sort of grant from somebody. This is first-class Net-based
work unburdened by megabytes of documentation, etc. - no
plug-ins required.

Most of the images have been reduced to a minimum of bits
for a maximum of impact. Stark black and whites. There's
even a nice show called, appropriately enough, Velocity,
which pushes shots snapped from the streets in rapid fire
order. It's a Web slide show that unlike so many others
actually hits the speed the feature was built for.

Even better, the ultra-reduced resolution serves the work.
Seemingly at random, "markings", streets outlined by the
white stripes of curbs and arrows against a black blacker
than asphalt, are mixed with "tags", most probably negatives
of street graffiti. The dashes, curves and slashes start
looking an awful lot alike and add up to a swiftly moving
portrait of another term for "speed" with the word "city" in
it.

Nice as it is, Velocity is not at the center of Heath
Bunting's site, his art or his comedy. It's a side-show.
Instead, Bunting's work makes use of almost every form of
communication imaginable - particularly telecommunication -
to employ comedy's most vital attribute, the unexpected.

Students of comedy know well that whatever happens within
the universe of a joke, a sitcom, a Shakespearean
knee-slapper, it needn't make sense in "the real world" but
must follow the rules established within that unique
universe. How fitting it is, then, that you can slip into
Heath Bunting's domain through a back door as well:
.

Laughter is a release, from tension, sorrow, or even as
Bunting puts it, "the pain of existence". That release is
triggered when the drudgery of the daily grind is
interrupted: Surprise! Of course, surprises can be either
pleasant or not, but after spending time at the Cybercafe,
I'm confident Heath Bunting only means well.

He's concerned with setting up networks of communication
that wouldn't exist if the technology he calls on for help
were only used in the way in which they were intended.
Bunting's primary materials are the public telephone, the
fax machine, email, your basic snail mail (postcards, etc.)
and a few unsurprisingly surprising media like the signs
held up at Tokyo subway stations with people's names on them
(my favorite, so we'll get to that later) and even a "tin
lan", a local area network involving public trash bins and a
cellular telephone in ways I don't mind admitting I didn't
quite get.

Each of the projects, many of them date, time and place
specific (i.e., they are performances in a way), are
sketched out in a scrunched-up prose broken into lines that
looks like poetry:

"peace and harmony vs destraction to destruction. language
from - mortality inspired fear, creates desire for -
unification via language. 'it good to talk' say british
telecom, but is futile as peace is expressionless; attempted
expression is conflict."

The links from these blurbs are often single letters within
words but they lead onto clearer summations of the projects
themselves, and that's where the real fun begins. There's
the one that had people calling a bank of public phones at
the Kings Crossing British Rail Station on a Friday in
August of 1994. It's really terribly irresponsible of me to
quote at such length, but I'd hate for you to miss out on
the flavor of Heath Bunting's dry comedy:

"Please do any combination of the following:

(1) call no./nos. and let the phone ring a short while and
then hang up (2) call these nos. in some kind of pattern
(the nos. are listed as a floor plan of the booth) (3) call
and have a chat with an expectant or unexpectant person (4)
go to Kings X station watch public reaction/answer the
phones and chat (5) do something different

This event will be publicised worldwide

I will write a report stating that: (1) no body rang (2) a
massive techno crowd assembled and danced to the sound of
ringing telephones (3) something unexpected happened

No refreshments will be provided/please bring pack lunch"

Bunting's intentions border on piracy, so his venture into
radio with a project called cybercafe FM seems only natural,
though to me, it weighs the public/private equation so
perfectly balanced in other projects a little too heavily on
the public side to be as much fun. Even though you could
tune in that day via your own telephone, effecting the
broadcast, the "spewing out into the airwaves" aspect is too
open-ended for there to be anyone personally drawn into the
temporary network.

And this is precisely what makes the other projects so
interesting. Radio doesn't "reach out and touch someone"
like one-to-one media, the phone, email, fax, etc. Bunting
uses the Web as an interface to create private networks
among friends, acquaintances and total strangers. You can
fill out forms to call someone up, send a postcard... or
write an email with a message that's already been sketched
out for you.

As I mentioned above, my favorite in this bunch is the Tokyo
subway sign project. Bunting introduces the idea behind it
with these words:

"when i arrived at the airport there were lots of people
holding up sings with peoples names on them. there was not
one for me, this made me a little sad."

Notice how Bunting cloaks the mischievousness of this
project with a faux innocence exempting him from any claims
for damages that may incur. The language, complete with
misspellings, run-ons and the lack of caps, sets a tone that
says, these are not prank calls, kids, let's see what
happens without anybody getting hurt. And the audience
follows, the messagers and the messagees.

The idea here is that you can fill out the Web form with a
message for somebody at a specified subway station in Tokyo;
a sign will be held up for them and the message delivered.
You can check the results, and the one right at the top...

"to: the suited man station: shinjuku from: Goeff in Derby

message: Im sorry about yesterday, perhaps we can try again.
Do you think you are doing the right thing?"

...jives in every way with the Bunting's announcement of the
project. The timbre of the language is naive, the situation
absurd, but the message delivered...hardly. There's a
picture of a primly dressed woman passing the message along
to the first suited man that came along.

I doubt he thought too much of the incident, though at the
same time, I'd bet it was the most unexpected thing to
happen to him all that week. I'd love to think he went home
and sat down and thought to himself..."Am I doing the right
thing?"

But even assuming he'd forgotten all about it five minutes
later, the incident is recorded and posted for all the world
to see. Some guy in Derby reached out and touched some guy
in Tokyo. Even with all the email, telephony and online
networking in all its many forms, this would never have
happened if Heath Bunting hadn't introduced a wrinkle in
fabric of the technology.

This technology is supposed to help us bank and shop faster,
get the things that need to be said by those that need to
say them to those to whom they need to be said faster,
easier, with as few wrinkles as possible. Heath Bunting is
reminding us with a sly wink of the vital human need of the
unexpected. And its often hilarious results.

David Hudson