James Gibson, Robbie Tingey: Narcissus
Title:
- Narcissus
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Artist Statement:
Combining a love of travel with a long-standing fascination with expressing and organising time, Narcissus explores the timeline of a journey. Photographs or music can evoke the memory of a trip; Hand-held devices can record the position of every step we take. Together these ideas produce a novel twist ? a recording of a journey that plays as you travel.
Narcissus represents a prototype for further exploration into how we might record our travel_ in the future. Using simple data collected from the Global Positioning System [GPS) worldwide network [including time, location and speed), Narcissus presents on screen our current Location, as well a record of our progress in a thoughtful and compelling manner. A variety of information pertinent to the current position is overlaid on the screen ? references to the locations of friends or family, places previously visited, the path of a previous journey. Accompanying this is audio reflecting the movement of travel itself; a unique, true -soundtrack” for the journey.
As the majority of the material is generated in real-time the resulting installation and archive simultaneously reflect and record the journey itself. From this Narcissus aims to provoke the discussion of such questions as: Would we adapt our travel plans to alter the record? Would hints from a record really remind us of previous journeys taken? Would other travelers choose to share the experience of our journey? our record becoming their map?
