Syndicate: INVITATION.

[Nina Czegledy <czegledy@interlog.com>]

Dear All,

I would like to extend a virtual invitation to visit the Touch:Touché project.
best regards
nina

*** Touch:Touché ***
Interactive installation works by Thecla Schiphorst and Daniel Jolliffe.
@ INTERACCESS, 401 Richmond St. West, Suite 444
Toronto, Ontario (Queen & Spadina)

OPENING: Friday, January 22 @ 6-10pm
ARTISTS TALK: Saturday, January 23 @ 2pm
exhibition continues until Friday, February 26th
GALLERY HOURS: 12-5 Tues-Sat
www.interaccess.org/touch

Touch:Touché is curated by independent media artist, curator and writer,
Nina Czegledy.
czegledy @interlog.com

Touch:Touché the touring exhibition of interactive works is presented in

Toronto
January 22 to February 26, 1999
InterAccess:Electronic Media Arts Center
401 Richmond St. West, Suite 444
Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3A8
Telephone (416) 599 7206
www.interaccess.org/touch

Montreal
March 6 to April, 1999
Oboro
4001, rue Berri, Local 301
Montreal, Quebec, H2L 3El
Telephone (514) 844 3250
www.cam.org/~oboro

Regina
November 19, 1999 to January 19, 2000
MacKenzie Art Gallery
3475 Albert Street
Regina, Saskatchewan S4S 6X6
Telephone (306) 522 4242
www.uregina.ca/macken/


The central works of the show are Thecla Schiphorst's "Body Maps:
Artifacts of Touch"  and Daniel Jollife's "Room for Walking".
Due to technological reasons Daniel Jollife"s "Shift"is shown in the
Toronto exhibit. The works explore the exchanges between the corporeal body
and the sensitive work of art.
---
"Bodymaps: artifacts of touch", employs electric field sensor
technology, in which the viewers proximity, touch and gesture evoke
moving sound and image responses from the body contained and represented
within the installation space.  Images of the body are stored on
videodisk.  The body of the artist (and a digitally represented body)
are projected onto a horizontal  planar surface.   The surface is
covered in white velvet creating a sensual and unexpected texture which
leaves 'traces' of the hand prints that are left behind, creating a
relationship to memory, an inability to escape the effects of one's
touch.

Thecla Schiphorst is currently based in Vancouver where she holds the
post of Assistant Professor in Interactive Arts at the Technical
University of British Columbia.  She received her formal training in
computer science and contemporary dance. A recent recipient of the
PetroCanada Award in New Media (1998), Ms. Schiphorst has worked in
electronic arts for the last fifteen years. Her work has been focused on
notions of the body and questions of how technology mediates the
representation and experience of the body.

"Room for Walking" is a mobile sculpture consisting of a wheeled cart and
video  projection screen. By physically moving the wagon the viewer becomes
involved in  the control of the flow of images Room for Walking is the
third in a series of  works by Vancouver based sculptor Daniel Jolliffe
which are based on the premise  that interactivity should require stronger
action than a just a simple point and  click.

"Shift" utilizes a small platform and a large bowl situated several feet
apart. Standing on the platform, the visitor is able to transmit his/her
movement across the room to the bowl, which responds via a radio system
within the sculpture. The viewer's action is at once involved in the
control of the sculpture, and displaced across the room by this same
control. Not merely a slave to the viewer's desire, "Shift" demands that
the viewer consider their own movement as well as their illusory,
electronically created sense of control.

Daniel Jolliffe is a Vancouver based artist whose sculptures using
electronics have been seen across Canada and in The United States.  His
works examine the way in which electronic technologies have changed our
bodily perception and human communication by employing the viewer's body
in  overtly physical acts mediated by this same technology.

---
"Most of our experiences with computers involve our bodies only as handy
sense receptors (for image and sound) and as a device for communicating
decisions. The apparent intent is to get the computer and the brain
communicating with as little interference from physical reality as
possible. The mouse is an instrument designed to reduce the complexity
of body gestures into a form that is suitably unambiguous... it reduces
a gesture to the point where its intent is clear ? You can't "sort of"
click on something."
David Rokeby
Where The Virtual Meets The Real
from the Touch:Touché catalogue
---
--
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Toronto (416) 599-7206
office@interaccess.org
http://www.interaccess.org