Avatar-X is a real-time broadcast artwork – http://www.avatarx.rtek.com.au/
a play of words over lunch and dinner between The First International Conference on Digital Live Art in London and Peformance Space Sydney. Through telematic connection and video convergence, the two scenes at two distant sites become one: fantasy and reality converge, and a disjointed conversation unfolds.
by Lucy H.G
www.digitalliveart.com/archive/2006/performances.htm
Avatar x: interactive performance feast
On-site in London: Lucy H G, Miranda Peake, Matt Solomon
Remote site in Sydney: Melissa Ramos, Jasper Streit, Rhys Turner, Francesca Veronesi
Avatar x, an interactive telematic feast, is ultimately a conversation piece between local and remote
participants, including a collective of media artists and technologists as well as audience members and
conference participants. Viewers and artists on either end of the world comprise only half of the
picture – half of the dinner party. On one end, in Australia, artists manipulate models in a miniature
set, while in London audience members are invited to sit at a life-size dinner table where their drawings
and writings are recorded. Through telematic connection and video convergence, the two scenes at two
distant sites become one: fantasy and reality converge, and a disjointed conversation unfolds.
Avatar x examines the human aspects of technologically filtered communication. Through telematic
performance and interactive play, the project collaborators uncover issues of interconnectedness. The
communication between remote participants emphasizes patterns in dialogue, revealing the evidence of
decay – a disconnect: miscommunication. The separation of sites, of audiences and performers, brings
up questions of intimacy and presence, questions that exemplify the problematics of telematics, and
also the focus: the humanity of technology. In a playful layering of sites and inter-actors, Avatar x
broadcasts the humanity of intermedia interfacing.
Avatar x is a permutation of Alpha Zuppa, which was developed and presented through the Johannes
Birringer Physical Camera and Telematics Workshop at Performance Space in Sydney in May, 2006.
Another rendition of the project, N-avatar, will be performed simultaneously in Los Angeles and
Sydney as part of Electrofringe 2006.
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