Artist Statement

COMPANY is an interactive multimedia installation, exploring social dynamics within an indeterminate narrative experience, while engaging in unpredictable performances with its participants. Guests enter an installation environment suggesting a living room, and there they encounter a life-sized sculptural relief enlivened with projection, audio, and computer vision. The figure appears to test its visitors with absurd stories and requests, while reacting to participants’ decisions to obey or refuse the demands. COMPANY creates an illusion of complex interaction through sensor tracking, branching narrative pathways, a video bank of responses, and structured randomness. Responses change more radically depending on the number of people in the room and their behaviors. Each encounter unravels divergently, unpredictably, and strangely.
Iterations of COMPANY have exhibited in New York City and Troy, New York, with a third version currently in development. berkoy.com/installation#/company-1

• Allison Berkoy is a Brooklyn based artist creating experiential narratives with mixed physical and electronic environments. Berkoy has an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and a BS in Theatre from Northwestern University. She has taught at Pratt Institute, Rensselaer, NYC College of Technology (CUNY), and the University of Tennessee. berkoy.com