Performances and Installations

A video installation with 4 screens with sound – interviews with 40 Shanghainese artists; 1 silent screen with artists’ short biographies; 1 screen with questions in chinese, italian, english; set of cards and books. 2 The project 40 +4 tries to answer questions related to the condition of the arts in a specific place (Shanghai) and in a specific time (China’s increasing opening up in 2008). 40+4 moves from the idea that “Art is not enough, not enough !” to a point of inquiry that avoids the usual reverence and awe of common art interviews. 3 40+4 is a project created by the team of Davide Quadrio, Lothar Spree, Zhu Xiaowen, and Xu Jie. They developed, in a long discursive process, a set of questions, squarely simple, straightforward, unsentimental, factual – avoiding any loophole for ambiguous, highflying “artsy” talk so common in recent interviews on art. 4 This inquiry aims to show the Facts of Life, the Life of Artists, the Realitiy of Art and Artists in modern China – that should be shown and investigated – the appropriate “philosophy” everyone can supply themselves. 5 The project involves forty artists - and the four people carrying out the research, making a total of forty-four, a number which, in Chinese, sounds like the translation of “double death, “ and which seemed to be ironically appropriate for defining the heart and soul of Art in China. 6 The forty artists – all with very different backgrounds, ranging from traditional art and painting to new media art, some of them Professors, museum directors, teachers etc. - were asked the same questions, each of which was printed on a flashcard, and there were twenty-seven cards in all, divided into four topics:
- general and autobiographical questions (grey cards),
- philosophical or psychological (blue cards),
- political or sociological nature (green cards),
- winding up with questions about art as a product (red cards). The interview/conversation lasted an average of 30 to 45 minutes, occasionally a whole hour. 7 We decided to record the “interrogations” only with hand held cameras, without any artificial light, without any studio like arrangements. Our recording tried a method of almost scientific purity and factual materiality . The resulting audio and visual material has a stark and blunt touch to it. 8 A first version was produced and presented in Florence, Italy, in Strozzina Art Space, Palazzo Strozzi in March 2008. This project is still in progress.

The film Brilliant City was produced during a stay in Shanghai with the British Council's Artist Links Program. The title refers to the name of the location, a residential complex comprised of 25 high-rises in the northern part of Shanghai. It is entirely shot from the 34th floor of one of the buildings and stages a peeping tom view of the surrounding city, capturing everyday activities that can be observed from this vantage point - training soldiers, building activity, traffic, gardening. The camera hovers above the entire panorama and focuses on details in the surrounding urban fabric.

The film reacts to a particular visual paradigm, which is well known from strategy and simulation computer games as the so called God View. It is the distanced perspective usually taken on by city planners, game players or politicians. In these situations people turn from individuals into patterns of movement and symbolic activity, and the viewer is turned into an accomplice of the visual apparatus and the power relations it signifies.

Distant Presences III is a live-telematic musical improvisatory performance featuring the cross-cultural improvisatory ensemble Ethernet Orchestra [1]. Following on from Roger Mills’ paper presentation, it will mark the 3rd in a trilogy of performances entitled Distant Presences [2], reflecting thematically on the multifarious nature of location in the “construction and representation of identity” [3]. Connecting international networked musicians with local Chinese players, Distant Presences seeks to create new cultural translations in a spirit of peer-to-peer exchange and learning.

Ethernet Orchestra is an international ensemble of skilled musicians who improvise together through network interfaces in different combinations of personnel and instruments, including voice. Its primary concern is with developing new practices of improvisation through networking musicians from diverse cross-cultural improvisatory traditions.

References
[1] Mills, R (2010) Ethernet Orchestra networked improvisation research and performance. [Online]. Available http://ethernetorchestra.netpraxis.net

[2] (2010) “Distant Presences” networked improvisatory audio-visual performance. [Online]. Available http://www.eartrumpet.org/research.html#distantpresences

[3] Sansom, M. (2007). "Improvisation and Identity: A Qualitative Study." Critical Studies in Improvisation, Vol 3, No 1.


Performer Biographies

Roger Mills is an international composer, sound artist and writer whose practice and research focuses on networked improvisation, sound installation and experimental radio. Credits include a Golden Eye award for contrapuntal radio performance Idea of South (Sydney), score for BAFTA award winning dance performance “At Swim Two Boys” UK and album production and performances with Turkish singer Mircan Kaya. http://www.eartrumpet.org

Ahmet Yavuz Uydu is a multi instrumentalist from Adana, Turkey with background in Turkish classical singing. He has composed for both film and television and recently performed with Rafet El Roman on his Australian tour. He performs with Turkish oud, bendir, cumbus and electric bass from Sydney.

Elke Utermöhlen is a performer, singer, sound artist and initiator of international arts projects. Elke works with electronics and computers, developing research based and/or site specific installations and performs improvised music: experimenting with voice in combination with real-time processing software and found objects. She also exhibits internationally and as director of Theater im Glashaus ensemble of performers, works with people with learning difficulties through workshops creating new works. She is also co-director of blackhole-factory.

Martin Slawig is an electronic sound artist and curator of Kunstmühle Gallery, Braunschweig, Germany, where he will be performing from for the concert. He improvises by playing found sound objects and processing these in MAX/MSP creating organic percussive and textures with a do-it-yourself aesthetic. http://www.blackhole-factory.de

Videos-collages from 133 Women Video-Artists from 62 Countries.
FRAGILITY (32 artists - 32 videos - 60 min); RESISTANCE (32 artists - 32 videos - 57 min.); PREOCCUPATION (34 videos, 34 artists 60 min); MALE (32 videos - 32 artists - 58 min)), WONDER (32 artists - 32 videos - 60 min) AGGRESSION (32 artists - 32 videos - 60 min) VITAL (32 artists - 32 videos - 60 min)

Since our premiere, in February 2006, our collages has been welcome by more than 70 Art-Centers, Museum, Galleries... from 28 countries.

You can find more information about us in our website like all our screenings and exhibitions : www.femlink.org

The list of FemLink's artists : Dena Al Adeeb (Irak) - Yun Aiyoung (Korea) - Samirah Alkassim (Palestinian Territories) - Dalia Alkury (Jordania) - Nirveda Alleck (Ile Maurice) - Siti Almainnah binte Ab Majid (Singapore) – Sama Alshaibi (Iraq) - Grimanesa Amoros (Peru) - Claudia Aravena (Chile) - Kinga Araya (Poland) - Marta Ares (Argentina) - Alessandra Arnò (Italia) - Elena Arzuffi (Italia) - oreet Ashery (England) - Rachida Azdaou (Algeria) - Brigida Baltar (Brazil) – Itziar Barrio (Spain) - Anna Barseghyan (Armenia) - Petra Bauer (Sweden) – Patricia Bentancur (Uruguay) - Viviana Berco (Argentina) - Vicky Betsou (Greece) – Ana Bezelga (Portugal) - Nisrine Boukhari (Syria) - Ligia Bouton (Brazil) - Vesna Bukovec (Slovenia) - Antonella Bussanich (Italia) - Isabel Carvalho (Portugal)
- Myritza Castillo (Puorto-Rico) - Lilian Chizoba Pilaku (Nigeria) - Tiffany Chung (Vietnam) - Félicité Codjo (Senegal) - Esperanza Collado (Ireland) - Giuliana Cuneaz (Italia) – Cecilie Dahl (Norway) – Lusine Datvian (Armenia)
- Evgenija Demnievska (Serbia) – Maria Adela Diaz (Guatemala) - Natasha Dimitrievska (Macedonia) - Mónica Dower (Mexico) - Chantal du Pont (Canada) - Katia Efimova (Russia) – Maria Friberg (Sweden) – Élaine Frigon (Canada) - Laura Garbstiene (Lithuania) - Laura Garcia Hernandez (Mexico) - Pélagie Gbaguidi (Benin) – Aliaa El Gready (Egypt) - Sayuri Guzman (Dominican Republic) - Patricija Gylite (Lithuania) - Inas Hakki (Syria) – Chengyao He (China) - Hala Al Hedeithy (United Arab Emirates) - Loes Heebink (The Netherlands) - Hilda Hidalgo (Costa-Rica) - Madelon Hooykaas (Netherlands) - Maki Horino (Japan) – Sharon Horodi (Israel) - Ana Husman (Croatia) - Olga Iwogo (Gabon) – Zuzanna Janin (Poland) – Jenny Jaramillo (Ecuador) - Dorte Jelstrup (Denmark) - Maria Rosa Jijon (Ecuador) - Esther Johnson (England) - C.M. Judge (Usa) - Kirsten Justesen (Denmark) - Cagdas Kahriman (Turkey) - Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went (Poland) – Dagmar Kase (Estonia) - Najmun Nahar Keya (Bangladesh) - Eva Koch (Denmark) - Raquel Kogan (Brazil) - Sandra Kogut (Brazil) - Tanja Koistila (Finland) - Monika Kovacova (Slovakia) - Alena Kupcikova (Czech Republic) - Sonia Khurana (India) - Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria)
- Bill Kouélani (Congo Brazzaville) - Manon Labrecque (Canada) - Jessica Lagunas (Nicaragua) - Yue Liang (China) - Tayeba Begum Lipi (Bangladesh) - Anna Malagrida (Spain) – Sara Malinarich (Chile) - Nahed Mansour (Lebanon) - Carmen Mariscal (Mexico) - Fatima Mazmouz (Morocco) - Victoria Melody (England) – Jelena Miskovic (Serbia) - Sabrina Montiel Soto (Venezuela) – Sabine Mooibroek (the Netherlands) - Vivian N. Limpin (Phillippines) – Aki Nakazawa (Japan) - Katrina Neiburga (Latvia) - Dorota Nieznalska (Poland) - Rokhshad Nourdeh (Iran) - Hiroko Okada (Japan) - Maria Papacharalambous (Cyprus) - Kasia Pawlowsky (Poland) - Leila Pazooki (Iran) - Anne Penders (Belgium) - Ingrida Picukane (Latvia) - Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo (Cuba) - Marilena Preda Sanc (Romania) - Jeanine Randerson (New-Zealand) - Johanna Reich (Germany) - Kamila Richtrova (Czesch Republic) - Rima Saab (Lebanon) - Gazelle Samizay (Afghanistan) - Fiza Sams (Singapore) - Amaranta Sánchez (Mexique) – Larissa Sansour (Palestine) - Véronique Sapin (France) - Carolina Saquel (Chile) - Alli Savolainen (Finland) - Verena Schaukal (Germany) - Oksana Shatalova (Kazakhstan) - Luzia Simons (Brazil) - Vouvoula Skoura (Greece) – Karla Solano (Costa-Rica) - Sanghee Song (Korea) - Nicoletta Stalder (Switzerland) - Sandra Sterle (Croatie) – Evelin Stermitz (Austria) - Klaudia Stoll (Germany)
- Ayesha Sultana (Bangladesh) - Surekha (India) - Kai Syng Tan (Singapore) - Prilla Tania (Indonesia) - Tsuneko Taniuchi (Japan) - Graciela Taquini (Argentina) – Gitte Villesen (Denmark) - Cathy Vogan (Australia) - Darshana Vora (India) - Jacqueline Wachall (Germany) – Bridget Walker (Australia) – Wafaa Yasin (Palestinian Territories) – Amina Zoubir (Algeria) - Sima Zureikat (Jordan)

Ghost Sim is a work-in-progress research-based arts project that creatively blends a shared virtual environment, a networked space and a physical location into a collaborative artistic framework and intermedial art installation.

The artwork's virtual world component will consist of a full 256m2 simulator of synthetic land hosted on an OpenSimulator server located on the Cloud. Into this empty realm, eight individuals skilled in the creative use of virtual world platforms will be invited to form a collaborative group that will occupy the space. Each member of the collective will be provided with a pre-designed avatar body and set of unique 'raw' building materials as participants will not be able to bring external data elements (textures, media samples, etc.) into the private simulator. Over a week-long period, the group will be allowed to modify the realm within a pre-defined set of parameters and construct an environment of their own creative/conceptual design (cf. Changing Room).

A Doll - a virtual body devoid human presence used to transmit aspects of a virtual world - located in the centre of the simulator will stream animated views of the environment to an application server located on the Web. The server will host a custom-made Pearl program that will process the live data-stream and output a time-based sequence of sixty still images. The images will be over-written at a rate of one per minute, and will visually document the previous hour of time within the virtual realm. An algorithmic Flash application will access the visual material and re-composite it into a real-time 'data-painting' (cf. The Vitruvian World) that will be publically viewable via the author's website www.takeo.org.

The Long Feedback is a participative network piece which invites the public to contribute to an extended feedback loop and delay line across the internet. The work explores the juxtaposition of multiple spaces as the acoustic, the social and the personal environment becomes permanently networked. The performance consists of live manipulation of multiple real-time streams from different locations which receive a common sound source. Netrooms celebrates the private acoustic environment as defined by the space between one audio input (microphone) and output (loudspeaker). The performance of the piece consists of live mixing a feedback loop with the signals from each stream.
Presentation Format Performance: A live performance which requires the presence of the artist at the console/ laptop lasting between 10 and 20 minutes. The performance calls for participation from remote contributors which can be conference delegates in spaces other than the performance space. If accepted in this format I would produce postcards with invitations to participate and create a core group of participants within DRHA. Participants are invited to make sounds or simply listen. The overall result is an assemblage of spaces and soundscapes which constantly feed into each other by virtue of being networked. Past performances have included participants in both indoor and outdoor spaces, at times interacting with each other through the creation of simple sounds which the network turns into delayed rhythms. The performance space is flexible though it needs multiple loudspeakers (between 4 and 8). These can be provided by the artist. The performance usually includes live blogging which is projected to the audience. This adds a layer of communication amongst participants and listeners which compliments the abstraction of the sonic field. The piece takes 1 hour to set up/rehearse once the UDP/TCP connection has been tested.

 
For more information see http://www.somasa.qub.ac.uk/~prebelo/netrooms/

 

The presentation examines the telematic work of Station House Opera in which live video streams are juxtaposed or collaged together to construct a single performance space from its various remote sources. Strategies were used to create cohesion across the locations, in particular panoramas melding spaces visually together and narratives in which characters are taken by different performers in different locations. The work has continued as a research programme at Central School of Speech and Drama, attempting to evolve parameters for a potential global performance space linking small localities across the world.
The notion of a single compound space implies 1) effective mutual monitoring, control and interdependence that renders it a functional setting for real-time composition and decision-making in performance; 2) the cues necessary in the interaction between the parts stimulate the psychological projection, empathy and engagement required for a performance or theatrical situation. In general, the emotional and physical body of the distant as equal to the present.

I will refer to particular components of telepresence: the sense of the distant other’s location in the performance space, his/her behaviour both observed and imagined, the effect of that behaviour upon the audience and any performers in its physical location and vica versa, and the mapping that an audience is obliged to do being oriented towards the understandable occupation of a complex space rather than the semantics of physical gesture or verbal language.

This will include considering the cognitive systems shared by audiences, such as the understanding of narrative and the recognition of similar social and personal aims, beliefs, and emotional responses emerging from actions and behaviour within a space.

The aim is find ways to experience physical and human reality existing as a phenomenon far wider than any individual’s immediate environment, not in terms of the flow of virtual language and images but in the cognition of a broadened physiciality, through a spatial and sculptural representation.
A practical demonstration will raise some of these issues: In the audience space a pair of video projectors, pointing opposite ways, rotate on the same motorised turntable. They show live video feeds from two locations, one local (and may include the viewing space), and one distant, streamed in via the internet. The two cameras are each motorised, and rotate in strict synchronicity with the projectors, so that the images move around the walls of the viewing space like a moving window, revealing worlds beyond that are fixed in space but revealed only in sections, like the eye that scans across a room. In this way a projected door appears to stay in its place on the wall, next to a real chair, even as the projection itself passes by.

The sound moves around the space along with the image, panning between speakers in each corner, and broadcasting only that sound that is being generated within the visible field. This emphasises the directionality and tangibility of the world being revealed and concealed. When the distant location is ‘fixed’ on the local one, topographic or sculptural features of the two establish a stable relationship, and can be manipulated to echo or interact with one another.

PEGLA is an intermedia installation with audience participation and/or live performance, telecommunication on-line event and social happening.
PEGLA is an interactive ironing based on computer supported multimedia that enables us to draw and create music while ironing. The iron assumes the role of a computer mouse and the ironing board the role of a mouse pad. With the idea of such ironing, the artistic project stimulates men and women to emancipate from their traditional roles: with it men learn, how to iron and women get familiar with a computer. PEGLA makes ironing social and creative and computing to user friendly and happy.

Photos: http://www.kibla.org/index.php?id=262

Movie: http://www.berlinerkunstkontakter.de/flash/2011/kw0611/privatview04022011.htm

PEGLA consists of a personal computer and classical iron and ironing board that are modified into interface, with which we can draw and compose music. PEGLA is an installation, a performance, audience participation, a multimedia work, telecommunication event and social happening.

PEGLA lets several variations of ironing combination, from solo user to multiple users interaction via network – Internet.. It can either be local, one computer – one iron, system for domestic use for one user to many users in a closed network via mainframe computer or it can be connected into the network of many computers and irons via Internet.

This interactive event can be either an installation with audience participation or a performance solo or group in the network with multiple irons in the space like an orchestra, which creates and plays music together and is beside personal drawing also involved in creation of the common picture and globally through the internet, which enables on-line communication with others and composing, playing and drawing and therefore creation specific society, in which we’ll never be alone, when ironing.

This is the artistic project with an idea that such ironing stimulates men and women to emancipate in a creative and useful way: with it men learn how to iron and women get familiar with a computer. Ironing again becomes pleasant and computer usage participates to domestic life! And you may also print your artworks and hang your drawings on the wall for proud showing to your family, friends and neighbours.

Therefore PEGLA changes attitude to house-works and brings them the multimedia upgrade. Instead of ‘just’ ironing the acteur can make sound and vision, when ironing. If he or she is on-line, it’s a possibility for common ironing. Involved person can, beside only drawing and playing music on his or her own, make sound and vision with other persons on the Internet or in the any network and there comes out the ‘all together’ picture and sound.

So PEGLA creates a special ‘ironing society’, that is not only a society of housewives and housemen, but and artistic outtake of every domestic worker. Everything made could be also put on-line to become a part of PEGLA society and it acts as an archive of listed works.

With PEGLA ironing gets the notion of a cultural and social behavior and becomes a way of artistic expression beside of a normally only useful house work. Even more important is it joins again a traditional relationship of a man with a computer in front him and a woman with the iron in her hand establishing connection between them and becomes interactive, inter-sexual, inter-social experience, which has to be a part of every home in the computer age.

It's on- or off-line, it's group or solo, it's picture and music, it's touch and feeling, it's creative and useful … it's fun and it's sexy!

Senses Places is a dance-tech collaborative project experimenting the potentials of interacting through hybrid modes of embodiment, adapting and creatively applying possible interfaces between physical and virtual bodies and realities. Initially under Real Virtual Games appropriating videogames physical interfaces to critically design/choreograph new modes of inclusive and meaningful embodied interactions, more recently the interest is in developing artistic cross-cultural potentialities opened by multi-user global platforms (Second Life).
We propose a collaborative hybrid participatory performance involving live participants at the conference and at other locations (Japan and New Zealand), interacting physically, via avatars, and telematics in a shared site at Second Life MUVE. The mixed realities performance experiments with choreographing/designing multi-user networked performance places and intelligent modes of inclusive trans-cultural embodied interfacing.

Confronting the absurd state of substitution or instrumentalization of our bodies by avatars in social networks such as Second Life, limited to punching keys to control the avatar’s moves and communication, the project fosters new modes of hybrid interaction amongst physical and between physical and virtual bodies (avatars and video mediated). Grounded by a shared dance score (or structured improvisation) and trans-cultural movement animations engaging kinesthetic empathy, the project takes advantage of Web 2.0 and recent game devices, developing different modes of embodied interfacing: web 2.0 webcam, Wiimote, combined with telematics.
Following the performance, we propose a panel discussion or roundtable with the authors and collaborators (present and inWorld - from Japan and New Zealand), and conference participants, to reflect upon aspects of local-global and in-between embodiment and environment experience addressed by the performance, and the implications to inter and transcultural issues, dimensions and particularities, concerning new (hybrid) choreographic and performative processes, forms, formats, discourses, and audience reach, reception, and participation.

Planned co-collaborators/coordinators and roundtable discussants (to be confirmed: Yukihiko Yoshida (Keio University, Japan) Pei-Jung Lee (University of Auckland, New Zealand) Yatin Lin (Graduate Institute of Dance Theory, at the Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan)

Streets of…7 minutes in 7 cities around the world is a video sound installation, which was first conceived by Alda Terracciano in 2004 and follows the artist’s sensory journey in the everyday life of seven cities around the world: Naples (Italy), Shanghai (China), Mumbai (India), Tangier (Morocco), Luanda (Angola), Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) and London (UK). Situated at the crossroads of three intersecting migratory routes - the Indo-European migrations, the Silk Road and the Transatlantic Slave Trade – the cities reveal a web of traces and memories of these encounters, which unconsciously resurface in people’s everyday life.

The project is inspired by London - a multi-lingual, inter-cultural city and crossroad of local and global cultural identities. As such, the city represents the pivot of a wheel whose rays reach out towards other places in the world in a cultural continuum. Moving from this observation, the video sound installation presents itself as a meditation on the act of seeing and listening to each other, taking audiences beyond the regime of the visual and awakening their critical approach to cultural stereotypes and current geopolitics.

While “free movement” inside the European Union is portrayed by the media as evidence of unifying democratic trends within the continent, external borders are increasingly being sealed off as a way of “protecting” local interests against unwanted waves of migration from “other” parts of the world. Such restrictive political measures concerning immigration are patently oblivious of Western creation of transnational logistic centres outside Europe for outsourced industrial production and cheap labour. Relations between Europe, China, India, Africa and South America remain as problematic and complex as in the times preceding colonial independence. European colonisation, which sealed these continents in a political and cultural continuum over the centuries, developed heavily stereotyped visual and symbolic representations, which still impinge on the way we perceive the intercultural dialogue today.

The project emerges from a need to look at these issues from a different angle, using a microscopic observation of the everyday life of the cities included in the project to uncover the interconnectedness of global/local cultures and histories beyond received media representations. Mirroring the quantum physics concept of “entanglement” between remote systems, the project explores the cultural DNA of the cities through an observation and extraction of their specific “memes” embedded in the everyday life. Considered by some theorists as cultural analogues to genes, memes indicate units of cultural ideas, symbols or practices transmitted from one person to another through speech, gestures, rituals and other cultural phenomena. Hence, the memes observed by the artist as distinctive units of body movements and city sounds, are experienced by the audience through relational, repetitive patterns which are evoked by the dynamic interaction between the visual and the sound landscapes recreated in the pieces. Similarly, the geographical approach, which locates the work as a "journey around the world", is used to convey an understanding of the relationship between subject, history, movement and space in terms of a ‘connective tissue’ linking cultures through visual and sound representations. As such, the installation invites audiences to take the role of flâneurs moving in and out of the different social and cultural milieux encountered along the journey. It is an experience of the everyday life as a form of primal artistic expression, which manifests itself ‘here and now’ through the memory of ‘being there’.

The idea of this installation consisting of two screens and two stereo soundsystems is based on a concert which will be performed the 1st of april 2011:
SYNCHRONIZING BERLIN - HONG KONG two Ensembles two Metropolis two Venues one Concert

SYNCHRONIZING BERLIN - HONG KONG isn't only about synchronizing music via internet link for a synchronized concert occurring in Berlin and Hong Kong at the same time. It is also about synchronizing minds in creating, organizing and producing this concert.
The traditional ‚Werkbegriff’ is changing in times of Web 2.0. This changeover of paradigma offers new possibilities the way we create art. No more is tradition or ancestry blocking the way we communicate and work together. Berlin and Hong Kong is developping this project not only in terms of copyright in a 'Common Sense'.

This installation was originally exhibited between the Bluecoat Liverpool and Shanghai University as part of the Liverpool Biennial on 23rd October 2010. Our proposal is to present a new version of Urban Picnic on the Screen for DRHA 2011 between the Ningbo China and Salford UK.
The original proposal for the Liverpool Biennial follows:

Following the success of ‘Picnic on the Screen’ presented at the Glastonbury Festival 2009 (http://creativetechnology.salford.ac.uk/paulsermon/picnic/) Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon have been invited to develop a new version of this interactive public video installation for Picnic in Arcadia (http://www.movementonscreen.org.uk/) used to link public audiences between the Bluecoat Gallery Liverpool and the Museum of Folk Art Shanghai, for the first time via a telematic videoconference connection.

Utilising the latest blue screen and HD videoconferencing technology the installation will bring public participants together within a shared telepresent urban picnic scene. Merging live camera views of remote audiences together and placing them within a computer illustrated environment, together with computer animated elements that are triggered and controlled by the audience through a unique motion tracking interface integrated within the installation. When a member of the audience discovers their image on screen they immediately enter the telepresent space, watching a live image of them selves sitting at a picnic scene next to another person. They soon start to explore the space and understand they are now in complete physical control of a telepresent body that can interact with another person in an illustrated enchanted ludic scene, complete with animated characters that respond to the their movement and actions.

This artistic proposal, for Picnic in Arcadia has been developed by Manchester based artists Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon, and brings together twenty years of experience in interactive media arts practice. Paul Sermon is a leading pioneer of telematic art and performance, bringing remote participants together in shared and immersive telepresent environments. His numerous awards include the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica “Golden Nica” for interactive art (for Think about the People now, 1991) and the Los Angeles Interactive Media Festival “Sparkey” Award (for Telematic Dreaming, 1994). He has been an Artist in Residence at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, a Guest Professor in Performance and Environment at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria, and is currently leading research in immersive and expanded telematic environments at the University of Salford, UK. Charlotte Gould has developed a series of projects including Urban Intersections, at the Waterfront Hall, Belfast for ISEA 2009, Picnic on the Screen for the BBC Village Screen at the Glastonbury Festival 2009, Ludic Second life Narrative for the BBC Big Screen in Liverpool for the MOVES09 Festival and Ludic Narrative, an installation using Bluetooth technology and mobile phones shown at the Futuresonic Festival in May 2008 - on which she delivered a paper at ISEA 2008 Singapore.

Further collaborators on this project include Alastair Swenson who is developing the motion tracking and Flash programming in this installation and have also worked on the Ludic Projects above. This project will represent a fusing together of previous projects and will allow for the further development of the artists practice.