Parallax

Interactive digital video projection environment 30 x 30 x 6 metres
3 large scale video projections, colour
In collaboration with Sue Hawksley (choreography)

A Little Pig Production, London, UK, 2002.
Supported by Sheffield Hallam University Art and Design Research Centre


Descartes/Foucault, first person singular/third person plural.

It is possible to consider Foucault's thought on society and self as in opposition to Descartes'. Descartes stated, in the first person singular, "I think, therefore I am". Conversely it is possible to consider the same proposition in the third person plural and to alter the verb from the internalised monocursive form ("think") to the discursive public form. Thus we can postulate "we converse therefore we are". As such the "I" is a construct derived from the discursive engagement of the collective.


Parallax is composed of three interactive video projections using very powerful high resolution video projectors and four computers with an infra-red remote visual sensing system for viewer interaction. On each screen is visible a number of figures. Each figure is individually interactive, with the audience and with each other. The piece uses object oriented and behavioural programming techniques.

Each figure is individually interactive and the viewer is fully modelled within the interactive system. The work will work with any number of viewers. Each viewer generates a three dimensional parallax view of four different figures on each video projection screen. As the viewer moves the three dimensional view on each of the three screens thus generated is modified to account for their new point of view. Each viewer generates their own perpective point of view and these are then montaged, on all the screens, into three integrated images such that each viewer is able to see all three scenes from the points of view of all the other viewers simultaneously. Thus the visible point of view is multiple and shared.