The Presence Project

The first part of Andrea Zapp's current current work, Eye 2 Eye will open on 16 June.

Eye 2 Eye – Networked Installation is developed for the Okno Gallery in Cheljabinsk, Russia. her partners onsite are Dmitry Lathukin and Svetlana Shlyapnikova from the Okno Gallery. The gallery's website is at http://www.oknogallery.ru/en/index.html

Andrea will be showing the work locally via a LAN connection at the summer festival at the GI in Moscow on the 16th of June and then travel on to the Urals, to set up the work as a networked link between theUral State University (Ekaterinburg) [http://www.usu.ru/] and South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk)

Andrea describes the piece:

Two remote identical black wooden boxes are connected via the Internet using I Sight cameras and an I Chat video interface.

Visitors glimpse through a small peephole into the box. An invisible camera inside on the opposite wall captures their eyes and transfers it to the other box, where it is displayed underneath the camera on a small round-shaped projection screen and vice versa. Both participants exchange their views in real-time, looking into each other’s eyes.

This surveillance interface inside the box is embedded into a stage like miniature set of an earth globe below and amidst a starry sky with little colourful planets dotted around that seem to float in the space. It recalls a satellite perspective, which is underlined by the surveillance interface above; but the view onto this small universe glowing in the dark, reminiscent of toys even, implicates ironic commentaries in itself – resulting in thoughts about who controls and who observes whom in a more globally networked sense

Image courtesy Andrea Zapp.

Andrea Zapp's website is at: http://www.azapp.de/

Posted by Nick Kaye at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Human Avatars is a networked media art installation by Andrea Zapp, with a soundtrack by Vini Reilly of Manchester’s Durutti Column.

The installation was launched in Manchester, UK, in October 2005 as part of the exhibition ‘Storyrooms,’ curated by Andrea at the Museum of Science and Industry.

‘Storyrooms’ explores interactive networks, media art and installation through work by Susan Collins, UK; Paul DeMarinis, Stanford, USA; Ken Goldberg, USA; Paul Sermon, UK; Cornelia Sollfrank, D; Tan Teck Weng, Malaysia; and Andrea, D/UK.

In early November, Gabriella (Giannachi) and I will meet Andrea and Paul Sermon to discuss extended documentations of their work beginning in year 1 or 2 of the Presence Project.

We plan to document and respond to ‘Storyrooms’ as a context for this work, focussing on the performance of presence through interactive and performative installations exploring telepresence and communications systems.

In Andrea’s work, the occupation of places and interaction with others becomes complex and dispersed.

For Human Avatars, visitors becomes subject to a series of live, interactive mediations, in which their presence becomes the object of attention for other remote visitors, whose watching is fed back and amplified through the installation.

Andrea describes the piece:

Human Avatars creates a visual dialogue between real and virtual participants on two networked stages:

Visitors in the exhibition space discover a small wooden hut, which they are invited to enter. A live image of their body inside is projected into a remote model version of the hut, complete with model furniture, where other visitors can make contact with the tiny moving figures by peeping through a small window. Yet unaware that a second camera inside displays their peering faces back on the window of the big shed, with their eyes now overshadowing the participants inside.

The architecture and the scenario appear very playful, but the immediate interactive experience is controversial, once the voyeuristic strategy behind the idyllic backdrop becomes evident - indirectly hinting at rather ambivalent and melancholic side effects of surveillance and visual control as an intrinsic part of media and entertainment.

Andrea’s work engages with the complexities of presence formed in an interleaving of real and virtual action, meeting and place.

We will begin developing this work on the Collaboratory more fully shortly.

Andrea’s website is at http://www.azapp.de/

The ‘Storyrooms’ exhibition is at http://www.storyrooms.net/

Posted by Nick Kaye at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)