Artist Statement

WIRELESS EXPERIENCE

Haunt>Pass (Kiasma version) recalls the sensuality of sea passage and calls for the passage of narrative via Bluetooth. The narrative here considers the ferry story and passage as transformation and memory, of haunted devices, haunted histories, in haunted space.

LeslieSharpe’s “Haunt>Pass”. is a multimedia ‘ghost story’ created for viewing on witiretess handheld devices. The project has two parts: one for the ferry and one the KIASMA exhibition.

Haunt>Pass at Kiasma is a tale of a ghost found on-board the Silja Opera Ferry, drifting from device to device in the form of electronic data. Haunted by its own memories of embodiment, place, and moments of transference, the ghost relays the story of how it appeared on the Silja Opera, recalling (among other things) that ship’s transformations. Thoroughly displeased with the comforts of the embodied, the ghost disrupts the story occasionally, with memories of earlier electronic and physical disturbances and signals — such as stories of naval collisions, lurking presences in the Gulf of Finland, the bursts of the first naval distress signals sent via wireless, the ‘pings’ of sonar, and ‘sensor ghosts’ appearing and disappearing on radar screens.

‘Passing…’ Kiasma museum-goers may experience the work semi-privately reclining in the gallery on a large soft wave. They can also engage the public and social space of the museum by passing story files to others with bluetooth devices. Ensuing social or file exchanges are thus dependent on peer-to-peer interactions (or lack of them) and will determine the social or private nature of the exhibition space (and the work).

• Leslie Sharpe (US/CA) is a Canadian artist living in the United States. She is Assistant Professor of Digital Art at Indiana University at Bloomington and was a Faculty Fellow in Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego from 2002-2004. She is the winner of the Nabi Prize/ Wireless Art Competiton for her work “The Spell of the Haunted Handheld” and has shown her work in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Full document (PDF) p. 67