In the framework of the Israeli Alternative Theatre Festival, Acco
In this age of the Information Highway, with its combination of satellite technologies and television, computers, and telephones, we are moving toward a system replete with producers, distributors, and consumers that offers a range of options for personal expression, cultural independence, and alternative cultures. The rapid changes taking place in today’s society as a result of technological innovations also influence and change the face of art. Video art, interactive installations, and net art (Internet art) are new art forms created with digital tools that constitute an important basis for reflecting the changes taking place in society.
The navigation in interactive art work demands of the viewer that s/he follow the line of thinking of the artist and decode the signs that the artist has created in order to progress and view the work in its entirety. The works chosen for The Digital Maze deal with the questions raised by the medium and with the awareness of the status of the viewer as a hero (protagonist) that wanders / navigates a world of new signs and symbols.
The word “maze” is connected to the concept of getting lost, confusion, and losing one’s orientation. The maze as a metaphor assumes a process of searching, as those inside it cannot see its end. Those trapped / wandering in a maze must undergo a process in order to reach the solution, the treasure, or the exit. They must crack a code or series of codes and adapt themselves to the prevailing rules.
The Electronic Maze and Theater;
The image of the maze offers a transparency of hypermedia technology. The maze is present in hypermedia systems in a structure that organizes information, text, an image, or sound and the experience of wandering in the maze that is created by the viewer in the course of his or her choices from within a chain of links in the virtual space (a hyperlink is a way of linking text with pictures, film, or sound in non-linear form).
A fundamental similarity exists between the virtual world and the theatrical world: Both rest on the building of a fictitious reality that exists in real time. The experience is created within the viewer / participant, where the condition for its creation is his or her ability to take upon him/herself the rules of the virtual world and take steps to relate to it.
The participating artists present a variety of perspectives on the maze. In everyone, the digital maze is built with different parameters.
Steve Stanza is showing “The Central City,” a work constructed of pieces of text embedded into music files built especially for the Internet with organic networks and city networks, computer-created images, and the sounds of the city of London. In “The Central City,” the city becomes an organic texture of diagrams. The networks in the work contain 200 films that can be navigated. Amorphoscapes by Stanza shows urban images taken from digital media tools are transformed into abstract compositions, then go back to resembling skyscraper jungles. These changes take place as a result of the movement of a computer mouse, yet this installation leaves the standard computer screen and is spread over four video projections. http://www.amorphoscapes.com/am/index.htm
The Interactive Labyrinth (a computer game) by Oren Zuckerman offers a new interface for labyrinth games such as PacMan. In order to move around the game space, the player uses his or her voice in place of a mouse; sound and not words trigger navigation through the maze. The viewer-player must learn to control his or her voice in order to navigate the maze and earn a high score.
Sous Terre: The Subnetwork by Gregory Shtonski is a network of underground tunnels in which subways figure as the ultimate urban mode of transportation. The questions that the installation asks touch on the current appearance of this underground world and understanding the transitions and human relations existing within it. In Sous Terre, images from the subway are organized as part of a network-based system, accompanied by text and sound. http://www.sous-terre.net
Megatronix by Teo Spiller is an interactive game played on the Web that gives the participant the illusion of free choice. In fact, the participant does not control the proceedings of the game, but rather acts within a random system arbitrarily determined by the script. Teo Spiller relates to random, illogical violence as it is manifested on television, in films, in computer games, and in comic books. He invites those participating, wherever they may be in the world, to add more scenes to “Megatronix” that will retain its anarchistic, haphazard character, thus ensuring that the game will be built, scene after scene, with no pre-known direction, and will be presented in a different way each time. http://megatronix.mestna-galerija.si/
Cyberspace Landscape by Eddo Stern is a digital video loop wherein a three-dimensional cave is transformed into an archetype of an image of the future.
SearchEngine v.003 - Yuli Ziv and Uri Golan;
Yuli Ziv and Uri Golan have created an experiential search engine similar to other search engines whose results are mostly unanticipated and do not reflect the expectations of the user. The viewer that uses the engine receives a link to an image and sound that are in turn linked randomly from within a database of images taken from the Web, with the result that every search creates a totally new experience.
http://www.yuliziv.com/searchengine.html
”Calling The Absent” is a work by Ricarda Denzer. Across from Denzer’s apartment is an apartment that’s been locked up for years, and no one knows why the former tenants left and what became of them. Denzer photographs the interior of the empty apartment and invites various people to try to reconstruct, using clues that she found, the history of the family that lived there.
“Incident of the last decade - 1999 Sampling Sarajevo, Sarajevo Between 1999 and 2000” is a three-part project by Gregory Chatonsky that documents Sarajevo as it looked then, its nostalgic past, and the relationship between the virtual place and the geographical locale.
In Annette Weintrope’s work, the cinematic style and icons of New York’s Times Square and 42nd Street combine with an investigation of the capacity of film to transmit a sense of intersection, creating layers of the places’ stories, elements of which are familiar in cinema. Advertisements and culture blend in a series of cinematic fables that merge personal stories and public places.
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