Abstract

Pocahontas is reluctant to live in a Digital matrix where she cannot feel the wind. She is dislocated from the multiplex of the analogue world. She believes that there is an animistic presence which pervades matter and that life is the prerquisite for its continued existence and evolution. As a toy in a Macdonalds Happy meal, she has been frozen into a singular physical aspect. After a conversation with a damaged and forgotten classical statue she realizes she is at least propelled by intent. The performance attempts to link projected images and sounds with physical objects creating an ambiguity between present and sampled events. An audio -visual performance, where a series of digitised sound and visual elements are controlled and manipulated by a series of actions involving fire, water, and touch. Digitised sound and images will mix with live elements but will also be modulated by thermal, moisture, and capacitance sensors. The context for this performance is the journey of a Pocohantis toy found in a Macdonalds “Happy Meal” through a number of scenarios which explore notions of animistic religion and the proposed realities of digital worlds with their isolation from the continuity of the analogue world. The scenarios exist as a series of models visualised by the audience through a projected macro video system. Events in this real but miniature world have outcomes in the sampled digital projection. When a stone is thrown into a pond ripples spread out from the event. Perceptually and actually. The stone falling into a digital pond only sends ripples within the perceptual frame and there is no “material effect”. The digital condition only makes sense to people. It does not replicate the collision of the materials of water and stone and the infinitely complex outcome of that event. Technically the piece would combine an open ended Director movie with a series of events within a number of table top scenarios linked by sensors to the movie. The live events would be mixed with the virtual scenarios unfolding and available within the computer.

• Peter Appleton, UK. Over the last twenty years Appleton has produced music and artworks which draw on his primary research into electro-acoustics and interactive systems, along with an interest in belief systems and animistic Religion. Invented instruments and methods of sound production have been used in the production of recorded and performed music and in the creation of weather and person sensitive sculptures and installations. Most recently he has experimented with sampled imagery in the creation of multi-media pieces linked via sensors to live events and interactive systems. This has enabled the inclusion of visual elements explored in his earlier paintings. His work is available on CD, Extreme Records Australia, He has performed with Brian Eno in Japan and has been commissioned to perform, site, and broadcast works in UK, Holland, and Australia. Currently Head of Interactive Arts at University Of Wales College, Newport, Peter Appleton has performed widely. He has made many appearances on TV and radio. His practice is well-established and examples are numerous, including, in 1988, “Solar Device for Deep Field noises Mk II” and “Between Wind and Water”, World Expo 88, commissioned as part of the International Sculpture Exhibition sited at the World Expo in Brisbane. In 1994-95, he presented “The State of Sea”, at the Tate Gallery St Ives. Interactive installation using solar powered digital sound boxes and laser transmission system which sent a live video of the sea image carried on a beam from the First Floor of the Gallery, overlooking Porthmeor beach, down to the sunken courtyard in the centre of the building. In 1996 July, he performed “7\8 of a Second” at Cannon Hill Park Birmingham, a one day sound event, and “Recurring Technicolour Dream”, I.C.A. London, Dec 97.