1997
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The ongoing interest with the story of Faustus led to The Faust Space, a site specific work made for the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA),Chicago. This piece was about magic, aliens and virtual worlds and was presented by two performers and digital technology including a live link up to a parellel virtual performance in a MOO.
The site was the vast 9th floor of 897 Jackson, a former warehouse whose lower floors house part of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The performance involves Faust, a bad magician with the same old and obvious tricks, and his angelic, if unenthusiastic, assistant.
Trickery happens at hi and lo-tec levels - there are corny stage illusions, audience 'willed' levitations, interruptions from virtual performers via the technology, fantasy voyages through virtual landscapes.
Increasingly encumbered by the technology the performers' movements become restricted through being plugged into more and more machines in search for new and better tricks.
Time runs out for the fictional Faust...
compromised by a choice between a virtual nirvana and plug in techno crap...
he flees with the angel to a virtual sunset.
The Faust Space
will give the spectator/user the opportunity to interact with the piece via various interfaces -some very apparent, some invisible. The work will develop several of the themes of our recent work.For instance ...
(1) a Concern about the notion of Choice; in particular how an artwork - or other application - which offers its interactive user the possibility of creativity, may in fact be limiting the creative response.
For instance ....
(2) an Interest in interfaces, in exposing how interfaces become articulate on the subject of interactivity and its possibilities in Installation.
Much scientific research tends towards making the interface invisible, thereby removing our awareness of distinctions between ourselves and 'other'. Other developments foreground the interface; we are interested in how different kinds of interfaces, operating together, can impact on the experience of time based art.
The Blurb
The Faust Space uses the legend of Dr Faustus -
the man who sells his soul to the Devil in return for supernatural powers. It created an environment where alchemy and lo-tec trickery fuse and clash in a stupidly beautiful and sensual game. The Faust Space is a place where grand narrative turns turtle and grows into small tales told by tell tales.
For the interactor, The Faust Space is a place where pointing and clicking offers no solutions and there is no knowing where the difference between real life and fantasy lies.