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Event
Coast
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There's No Simulation Like Home by Paul Sermon 12th November - 18th December 1999 |
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Press
Coverage
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| Meeting
of Virtual Strangers
Wear blue and you are in danger of disappearing altogether. Welcome to the totally disorientating world of telematic interaction where realities collide. In a mock up of a house -living room, dining room, bedroom- in the centre of the former church that is Fabrica people pause or mingle. They rest on the sofa, lie on the bed, sit by the table. They can even see themselves on the television sets in front of them. Suddenly they are not alone. Look on the TV screen and a stranger is sitting on their lap, lying on the bed beside them stroking their body leaning across the table offering a hand shake. They stretch out tentatively. Hands meet. But there is no one there. Forget the Blairwitch Project. This is genuinely spooky. What is happening is that there are people in another room with the same furniture, but it is covered in blue, making it invisible, as in the blue backgrounds in movies where the special effects will be added afterwards. They too have their TV sets which are linked electronically to yours. You can see each other but through the TV sets show your bodies intermingling, you are both resolutely alone - yet, if your co-ordination is good, intimately connected. Outside the mock house are more TV sets where others can observe what you are both doing. Everyone is voyeur and participant at the same time. At Hastings, the set-up is slightly different and on a smaller scale, but the effect is the same, to completely confuse and beguile. The work is the creation of Paul Sermon, a fine art graduate with a string of international awards for his interactive art creations. A Briton, he now lives in Berlin where he is an associate professor in telematic media. His exhibition is all about communication, how we use the space around us, how we connect with strangers. Whether it is art or not is open to question. What it is, is one of the most fascinating and entertaining experiments in body language and human psychology Ive ever come across. Make the connection. Laurence Levine |