Pocahontas Has Misgivings About Living in a Digital Matrix

Symposium:


Presentation Title:
  • Pocahontas Has Misgivings About Living in a Digital Matrix

Presenter(s):


Abstract:

  • Pocahontas is reluctant to live in a Digital matrix where she cannot feel the wind. She is dislocated from the multiplex of the analogue world. She believes that there is an animistic presence which pervades matter and that life is the prerquisite for its continued existence and evolution. As a toy in a Macdonalds Happy meal, she has been frozen into a singular physical aspect. After a conversation with a damaged and forgotten classical statue she realizes she is at least propelled by intent. The performance attempts to link projected images and sounds with physical objects creating an ambiguity between present and sampled events. An audio -visual performance, where a series of digitised sound and visual elements are controlled and manipulated by a series of actions involving fire, water, and touch. Digitised sound and images will mix with live elements but will also be modulated by thermal, moisture, and capacitance sensors. The context for this performance is the journey of a Pocohantis toy found in a Macdonalds “Happy Meal” through a number of scenarios which explore notions of animistic religion and the proposed realities of digital worlds with their isolation from the continuity of the analogue world.

    The scenarios exist as a series of models visualised by the audience through a projected macro video system. Events in this real but miniature world have outcomes in the sampled digital projection. When a stone is thrown into a pond ripples spread out from the event. Perceptually and actually. The stone falling into a digital pond only sends ripples within the perceptual frame and there is no “material effect”. The digital condition only makes sense to people. It does not replicate the collision of the materials of water and stone and the infinitely complex outcome of that event. Technically the piece would combine an open ended Director movie with a series of events within a number of table top scenarios linked by sensors to the movie. The live events would be mixed with the virtual scenarios unfolding and available within the computer.

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