1) THE DIARY OF THE INNER CYBORG British Premieres
An interactive video projection.
Venue: B4 at The Arches
Medium- Computer (PC), LCD projector, Flash animations, JavaScript programming. 'Diary of the inner cyborg' opens when the viewer clicks on the crouching figure (portrait of the artist) on the left hand side of the main interface. The diary consists of a series of JavaScript driven monologues that simulate a live chat room session with the text appearing as though someone is entering it using a keyboard.
The inner cyborg is an existential statement and a construct that embody the human organism's instinctual drive for self-preservation and continuance. The cyborg is presented as a technologically generated simulacrum of the individual self that might someday replace the original. The notion of the cyborg as a simulation displacing the original is a reflection upon Jean Baudrillard's seminal work 'Simulacra & Simulation.'
The Diary reveals the 'thoughts' of a virtual persona who calls himself Orpheus. The presented text is a series of queries about the nature of time, existence and death. On the final page the diary concludes by implying that the 'real' is transient, while the 'virtual is not time bound.
2) 'FLOW - Instant Karma Algorithm' - British Premieres
A dual panel interactive video projection.
The work consists of two computer generated interactive video interfaces projected as a video loop. On one side is a tightly cropped pan shot of a human body that ceaselessly moves (pans) in various directions along the surface plane of the screen. When the viewer clicks on this moving (panning), each click transforms into a small circular wound that starts dripping a trail of blood.
Running beside this is the video loop of a pair of hands being washed in a trickle of water. As the hands are washed, snapshots of world events gathered from television news clippings drop down from the top of the panel like drops of water.
As the viewer clicks on these image 'droplets', the trickle of water falling on the hands broadens into a flow. Using the data collected from these counters, an algorithm computes the viewer's karma profile and then projects a personalised message.