Re: [-empyre-] affect in digital writing

[Kenneth Newby <knewby@sfu.ca>]

Our recent work One River (running),  coming out of our Computational 
Poetics research project, involves a gallery with a "river" of 32 
screens suspended in space, each of which can carry a discrete 
projection.  The "river" rises in an arch in the middle of the room, 
inviting the gallery visitors to enter and experience the work from a 
variety of perspectives.  The screens work effectively as front and 
rear projection surfaces.  A 13-channel audio system diffuses 
soundscape material and a set of eight channels of audio run above the 
"river" with the voices of the community flowing from end to end.  The 
whole effect is large, somewhat cinematic, but in an expanded spatial 
sense in that the two-dimensional quality of the projection surface is 
broken up like so many droplets of water in a rushing river to become a 
sculptural presence in the room.  The work has just gone up for 
exhibition and the initial experiences of people suggest it works very 
well as an image of community that involves the visitor in the space 
and time of the work.  I think much of this has to do with the scale of 
the work and its temporal dimensions as well.  It's not a "one-liner" 
as Jim Campbell terms many interactive installation works, but rather a 
kind of spatially expanded cinema that has a mutable form over its 17 
minute cycle.  It "writes" large with the voices and mouths of the 
community in which it's installed.

Kenneth.


On 30-Oct-05, at 7:03 AM, Jim Andrews wrote:

> > One of the things I
> > think about is largescale projection -- putting the audience in
> > the story.
> > Would this produce a higher level of affectivity? Anyone know?
>
> I didn't experience this piece, but Rafael Lozano Hemmer's piece
> "Re:Positioning Fear" involves large-scale projections:
> http://rhizome.org/artbase/2398/fear
>
> His other projects in "relational architecture" at 
> http://lozano-hemmer.com
> are also worth a look concerning large-scale stuff in digital art.
>
> ja
>
>
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