Up to you in a nutshell

The installation plays with time, timing and self positioning within this society based on the choice of information you take on to become memories during your personal life time as well as with memories that were build up during the development of mankind and are buried in our subconscious.

The installation consists of two parts: The Guestbook and the Installation itself.

Before the user enters the installation area he fills in a "on-screen" guest book with details like his name, his favourite saying, a colour choice and his star sign. These entries then become part of the installation and personalise it. The entered name appears in all text lines that address the user (i.e.given my name was entered: Brigitte, are you on time? Or "Brigitte, don’t play with strangers"), the colour choice adjusts the background colours of the projections to blue, green, red and orange/yellow, the favourite saying gets intertwined with prepared text, the starsign triggers random excerpts from his horoscope.

In the installation area the user has two main choices, which are then broken into nine subsequent choices. The main choices are speed of animation and memory pool. The sub choices are:

1) Speed: nine different speed from 0 (pictures blend in and out) to 10 (frantic).

As the big background panels meet in an approx. 90 degree angle, the animating graphics are designed to mimic a "drive-experience" working with a trick I got from a stage designer: Some graphics stay still, some go "with the user" and disappear in the centre fold behind the "telly", some come from there towards him. The higher the animation speed the user chooses, the more speed the graphics build up, creating everything from a smooth, comfortable drive to the drive from hell

2) Memories: Breaks down in three choices as in personal lifetime (back to childhood), contemporary memory (adult everyday life, work experience, commercial manipulation) and subconscious memories (inherited action-reaction schemata and internalised reactions) Each choice can be fine-tuned by three further choices, for instance

1. Childhood: Good and bad memories and the metaphor of childhood. (Good memories: child hood freedom, bad memories: childhood constraints, metaphor: Being close to objects of interest, lack of routine in a positive sense, enjoyment of new things…)

2. Adult: Personal values as opposed to manipulated values, the third option is a layered on screen-multiple zap- experience.

3. Subconscious: Inner and outer landscapes plus symbolic language translated in contemporary language.

If the user is entirely passive, at least his entries in the guest book animate and are intertwined with data taken from the computer like time, day and date. I don’t want to judge on my audience, if the user chooses to be passive, he still has an enjoyable experience.

Technical requirements: To run the installation two computers are necessary: A Mac G3 fitted with two additional graphic cards to run a total of three displayes, the second computer can be low spec pc or mac, both computers need to be networkable (ethernet?). Also two projectors (either fitted with wide angle lenses and reverse viewing option or ceiling projection), a possibility to hang (ceiling bars) or put up (4 up to three metres height expandable telescope pols and two horizontal pols) two 3x4 metre screens (I used tracing paper from the roll so far, that worked well), a data presenter or data input capable tv, 2 vga signal pusher, 1 keyboard signal pusher, 2 speaker systems that work with computers and lots of powerplugs and extension leads.

I could temporarily provide my own g3 and a second low spec computer. The cost for hiring projectors would be around £1200 for one week. The insurance would be around £600 for one week.

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