[ISEA2004] Artists Statement: James Gibson & Robbie Tingey – narcissus: A JOURNEY’S COMPANION

Artists Statement

WIRELESS EXPERIENCE

Combining a love of travel with a long-standing fascination with expressing and organising time, Narcissus explores the timeline of a journey. Photographs or music can evoke the memory of a trip; Hand-held devices can record the position of every step we take. Together these ideas produce a novel twist ? a recording of a journey that plays as you travel.

Narcissus represents a prototype for further exploration into how we might record our travel_ in the future. Using simple data collected from the Global Positioning System [GPS) worldwide network [including time, location and speed), Narcissus presents on screen our current Location, as well a record of our progress in a thoughtful and compelling manner. A variety of information pertinent to the current position is overlaid on the screen ? references to the locations of friends or family, places previously visited, the path of a previous journey. Accompanying this is audio reflecting the movement of travel itself; a unique, true -soundtrack” for the journey.

As the majority of the material is generated in real-time the resulting installation and archive simultaneously reflect and record the journey itself. From this Narcissus aims to provoke the discussion of such questions as: Would we adapt our travel plans to alter the record? Would hints from a record really remind us of previous journeys taken? Would other travelers choose to share the experience of our journey ? our record becoming their map?

  • James Gibson (UK) & Robbie Tingey (UK) are multi-award winning designers who have worked together for over 6 years producing online, live event and consumer electronics device projects. They are currently based in London, UK.

Full document (PDF) p. 160