| R/L, an interactive multi-media
installation, is a meditation on the schism between what we envision and what we see. R/L
explores the dichotomy between utopian idealism vs. private realities, ideal public spaces
vs. the dystopian function of real spaces. A kind of "Waiting for Godot" meets
Calvino’s "Invisible Cities." The installation presents a pair of animated characters who live in a
tiny, abject world. We are voyeurs into the lives of these characters who behave as people
do when they are alone and unwatched. They sit, they chitchat, they drink, they smoke,
they pick their noses. Their conversations are filled with the mundane banalities and
arguments that occur between couples who have too little to say – all of which
reveals the small details that make up the fabric of everyday life. Viewers are encouraged
to stay and hang with these characters for a while. Viewers’ movements trigger
sensors placed throughout the room. The viewers’ behavior, then, is fed into a
computer and processed so the characters respond to the stimuli in their environment. Thus
the animated spectacle is composed on the fly, different for each viewer.
In real life we all live in small worlds,
real worlds, with boredom, warts, problems and chaos yet we dream of the other ones,
better ones – worlds that are so much better that they wouldn’t allow people
like ourselves to inhabit them.
In R/L, the interactive relationship
between the viewers and the animated characters is crucial. So is the interactive musical
score that surrounds the piece which is based on John Cage’s Time Bracket Notation.
Cage’s number pieces are a manifestation of "interactive" music –
control of the musical experience is shared between composer and performer and changes
with each performance. The "open window-ness" of John Cage’s Number Pieces
captures the coincidental nature of the individual and their environment… itself a
kind of live self-performing experience. |
