Meeting at a Distance
Aleksandra Dulic: Meeting at a Distance installation
Lisa Forbes: Performance
Damian Keller: Music
presented at: Alexander Centre, 2000
Faling Sky room
Meeting at the Distance work was developed as a part of my Masters of Fine Art program of study within the interdisciplinary environment of Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, which allowed me to position my practice at the intersection of visual arts, sculpture, installation, film, theatre and performance. My thesis investigates perspectives of the communication technologies. The core of this thesis deals with the technological aspects of contemporary communication systems through which our connection to physical space and interaction has changed radically. The accompanying project physically maps some of these new relations developed within our virtual media realities by means of a five-room installation.
The viewer interacts with the piece in several different ways, the most fundamental of which is the interaction through the actual and the virtual spaces. The analysis of the relationship between the bodies in physical—architectural and virtual—media spaces is achieved through a contrast between the direct interaction of participants and performer in one space with the virtual interaction of the same subjects, captured and broadcast, in a remote space.This work was displayed at Alexander Visual Arts Studio, School for the Contemporary Arts.
The installation works of Meeting at a Distance explore virtual concepts through five adjoining physical spaces:
FallingSky is a communication room. Phone receivers, constructed from packing tape, act as symbols to recall the experience of technocratic warfare from a distance. Beneath this ceiling of interconnected wires is a table with two chairs. In one of the chairs a person is sitting, wrapped in packing tape. From inside this translucent shell, she offers mental dialogue to those who may chose to sit in the second chair.
Lisa Forbes with a member of the audience
Faling Sky room
A transmission room itself houses simply two monitors, placed opposite each other on a table covered with black paper. The live images are supplied via cable from two 'surveillance' cameras, one fixed on the face of the performer in the Falling Sky room, the other on the sometimes occupied chair facing her.
Mi Amor
Mi Amor is a traveling section. It is a video installation structured as a perspectival machine with three video viewpoints. The first part of this installation is architectural construction of downtown Vancouver captured in a single car drive. The second part is a confession of the urbanized soul through Lorcas poem "Corazon Nuevo". This reconstruction explores the architectural/emotional space of Vancouver.
Dialog is a room for playing. A soccer table is there for the public to play with a miniature globe standing in for the ball.
Metalog is a room for meditation. It is an installation highlighting the complexities and limitations of perspective. In the centre of the room sits an apparatus designed to comfortably aid a person in the act of physical inversion.
