Images from SCANZ, Intimacy & In.yer.face, and Dunedin Fringe presentations
At SCANZ, we presented some of the material during the final night of presentations at the Govett Brewster Gallery, and set up the installation element of the work in the foyer outside the auditorium. When the audience left (some time after our presentation) they encountered a loop consisting of a web cam recording its own projection. As people walked through the projection, they saw themselves appear a second later, and echo back into the vanishing point of the projection.
Intimacy & In.yer.face was a night of live improvised online and on-site performance, curated by Dan Agnihotri Clark and featuring aerialists, electronic musicians, international karaoke and another work-in-progress presentation of Familiar Features. We had the beginnings of the UpStage part of the performance, and were using the characters of Edmund Hilary (conqueror of Everest and NZ national hero) and Helen Clark (current NZ prime minister) as tour guides. The Ed avatar spouted lines from his real diaries, while Helen Clark attempted to cover up the dark underbelly of New Zealand with touristic gloss. Audience members both online and on-site had to guess a password which gave them access to the installation part of the performance.
In October 2006, we presented the most fully realised version (to date) of Familiar Features; unfortunately two technical problems hampered our preparations, meaning we spent more time trouble-shooting than we wanted to and weren't able to get the show itself as far along as we'd hoped. However, the feedback we received from audiences both online and on-site was generally enthusiastic and positive.
Again the work was presented in two distinct parts: the search for the perfect holiday destination through the cyberspaces of UpStage, followed by an interactive web cam installation. The on-site audience entered a gallery installation which included a projection of UpStage and three computers which they could use, as well as tourist artifacts - suitcases, brochures, scenic images. They were asked to remove their shoes, which were packed into suitcases and taken away. Online audiences also removed their shoes. At the end of the first part, having discovered the perfect destination, the audience were asked to proceed to immigration in an orderly fashion. Here the on-site audience entered the web cam installation and discovered their shoes, arranged around a map of New Zealand. Online audiences could see the "shoe-cam" and as the audience gradually found and retrieved their shoes, they left digital traces of themselves echoing in the web cam, observed by the online audience.
Read the log of the Dunedin performance