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Introduction
The exhibition
was supported by and runs in parallel to the Cheltenham Literary Festival.
The work shown in Losing the Plot is part of an ongoing project whic h
investigates the interfaces between technology, narrative and everyday
life.The exhibition of interactive installations explores the embedding
of narrative in new media forms. Using a variety of genres and technologies
the literary and cinematic are merged through the environmental embodiment
of story.
Featured is the first showing of Martin Rieser's Understanding Echo, an
interactive poetry installation funded by Digital Arts Development Agency's
(DA2) Open Commission Award The other work ranges from the merging of
poetry and film in multimedia to the fragmentary reconstruction of Coleridge's
life on film Talking eggs, houses of glass and feathers, a woman writing
w ithout "a room of one's own" and the mapping of mythologies
into virtual space are all part of the exhibition. The Exhibition uses
interactivity and narrative to investigate the interface between mythology,
literature and everyday life.
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The experience
On entering the upstairs galleries, one can hear distant echoes from various
installations. There are exhibits on either side of the atrium. The space
is darkened. In one space a red velvet curtain swathes a miniature, interactive
theatre, in another is a shining doll's house of etched glass, lit from
within by a single television screen endlessly repeating a sequence of
images.and voice continually unfurl.
We move into the mythological,
narrative space of the Cretan Labyrinth, mirrored on both sides of the
gallery. Through touchscreen interaction giant figures can be controlled
by the audience. A luminous pathway continues into the tale of Euryd ice
and Orpheus tracing a journey from the sunlit surface of the Earth to
the depths of the Underworld.
A silver tent contains a cushioned seating area where participants can
trigger and control an intimate dialogue of personal relationships contained
within a mysterious object.We pass a name constantly being written and
erased on the wall.
A face speaks from a pool of water, surrounded by the images of its life,
the voice changing as the audience advances or retreats.
A great Ice Palace melts and reforms in slow motion, as fragments of image
moveacross the screenThe exhibition is supported by and runs in parallel
to the Cheltenham Literary Festival
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Losing
the Plot
