All the World’s a Screen
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Transformative Cinema
Presentation Title:
- All the World’s a Screen
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Keywords: Ludics, community, embodiment, telematics, open-systems, telepresence, intervention
On the evening of Saturday 28th May audiences at MadLab in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and Hanger Artist Studios in Poblenou Barcelona were joined together on screen for the first time to create their very own interactive generative cinema experience, complete with sets, costumes and props. Employing the scenography techniques of Alfred Hitchcock, the artists created a miniature film set in which the remote audiences acted and directed their own movie, transporting participants into animated environments and sets where they created personalised unique narratives. This immersive interactive installation pushes the boundaries of telematic art and generative cinema, combining the possibilities of telepresent performance with miniature scale-models and animated scenes for the development of audience participation to explore how narratives can be revealed through a subtle interplay between artist, audience and environment. With key references to the telematic stage, user generated performances and the dramaturgy of networked communication, this project references Shakespeare’s infamous line ‘All the world’s a stage’, with the seven rooms of the model film set relating to the seven ages of man presented in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, providing a metaphysical backdrop to the unfolding plot. Members of the audience in Barcelona were able to decide on the context of this interactive telematic performance by using an iPhone app to select between seven different background sets, which consisted of live webcams scenes and animated environments. The participants in Barcelona could then stand in front of a chroma-key blue screen and position themselves within these stage sets. Members of the audience in Manchester were then transported into this telepresent experience via their own blue-box studio to join the ‘players’ in Barcelona within the dramaturgy of the model set as they journeyed through the ‘Seven stages of man’. alltheworldsascreen.tumblr.com paulsermon.org/screen
