Third steps towards the third triangulation

The Digital Face, analysis and interrogation of a case study

As my interest for the phenomenon of greetings in political communication started to grow and increase in complexity, I realised it was essential to find similar examples of other designers and artists’ practices revolving around the same topic, in order to get a clearer grasp on prior research in this field of study, and eventually use it to interrogate my investigation.

In particular I came across a project that really struck me, and which I believe has several intersecting points with my research. The project in question is a performance and two-channel video called The Digital Face (2012), by the New Yorker artist Liz Magic Laser. Laser’s practice focuses on questioning different ways information is organized and circulates, for example through broadcast television, news media, internet memes and newspapers. A notable area of her work is dedicated to political communication. In this context, her art piece The Digital Face offers a methodical analysis of politicians’ body language during formal speeches.

Laser, in an interview about her work (source and data), raised the common feeling that politics often seems as something too abstract, raising the question as to which message politicians actually want to convey. She selected videos of USA presidents’ orations and she muted them in order to draw attention only to the physical presence of the orator in the space, as well as their movements. The purpose was to decode the unspoken language of political rhetoric and eventually make the discourse more accessible by looking exclusively at the body language. An interesting insight that Laser gained as a result of her investigation was that the first US President to use his hands and the whole body to accompany the verbal discourse in formal speeches is George H. W. Bush.

Let us clarify this claim: Laser acknowledges that politicians before Bush were also used to gesticulating during assemblies and debates; however, it is only from Bush senior onwards that the body language starts to play such pivotal role in occasion of official and ceremonial speeches such as the State of the Union – broadcasted through television all around the country. For instance, we can see Ronald Reagan, Bush’s predecessor, in all his State of the Union from 1981 to 1988 keeping the hands completely stationary on the podium.

Starting from H.W. Bush all the Presidents have used their hands to maximize the efficiency of their speeches. It is intriguing to think that Bush’s first mandate in 1989 coincided with a historical event which changed the paradigms of our era: the fall of the Berlin wall and the disruption of the USSR. It might be worthy to investigate whether a relation between the end of the Cold War and a new way American politicians communicate exists: perhaps, due to the fact that in this era the presence and the use of television in political discourse became more significant. However, this speculation lies outside the scope of my research, but might be interesting to elaborate further in other studies.

Finally, Laser put in comparison the speech by Bush Senior at the State of Union in January 1990 with the one Obama held in January 2012. Following only their gestures, the virtuosity of their movements becomes clear. The hands trace signs in the air interacting and intertwining with each other and with the surrounding space in a hypnotic dance. The successions of gestures shape a choreography of sorts, which is thoroughly calculated in order to persuade the audience.

The two politicians have different styles of oration, which are reflected in the way they use their hands. For instance, something that Laser highlights are the idiosyncratic gestures of Bush, which (as she maintains) make him similar to a snake. He pounces quickly with no muscle coiling beforehand and he displays a series of very precise and firm movements which evolve rapidly from an apparently static stage to a very energetic and concise sign. This reflection is important because it allows us to think of the gestures as an independent portion of the discourse, which possibly helps and emphasises the comprehension of the verbal part, but it can also stand by its own potentially creating other new and different narrations.

Laser eventually worked with two performers to present the comparison of the two speeches in the Derek Eller Gallery, New York in 2012. The two performers, facing each other, were involved in a sort of silent dialogue where they were re-enacting the mimic of the two presidents’ speeches. Laser dressed the performers with a grey integral tracksuit as a further expedient to erase any difference between them and bring attention only on their movements. During the performance two cameras on a tripod were taking photos of the performers at regular intervals. Speech coaches often use the camera as a tool to dissect and perfect individual movements, and so the presence of cameras in the performance were a sort of explicit reminder that what is re-enacted is a performance. Laser finally decided to amplify the sound of the camera shutter clicking, which eventually became the soundtrack of the performance. The mechanical efficiency of the shutter reflects the proficiency of the gestures.