June 13, 2006
Home Entertainment
where old technologies go to die
The network is great, but if you're in Paris, June, 12-17, you get ice cream!
Home Entertainment is an installation proposed by Fabrica, constructed out of industrial storage shelving and stacks of obsolete technologies from the 1980s – dial telephones, VHS tapes and old school ghetto blasters, recreated in perfect detail in flawless white ceramic. The effect is that of a mausoleum of defunct consumer electronics from the recent past, the place where old technologies go to die.
Right in the center of all this frozen obsolescence flickers an electronic screen, the only sign of life within the installation space. This screen too is made of white ceramic, but the electronic display shows a moving image sequence of hundreds and hundreds of ghostly faces, peering intently out of the window and trapped in a never ending video loop. These are the faces of passers by in the street who, by touching a special sensor set into the store window, have triggered a video camera to record a short sequence – 24 frames or one second of moving image – of themselves to add to the exhibition. Each day the exhibition grows as more and more passers by add themselves to the artwork.
Home Entertainment is both a work of interactive art and a design piece. It raises questions about the relationships between technology, innovation, nostalgia and the uncanny. At the same time it articulates an approach to interactive art which stresses a transactional or relational form of audience engagement whereby passers by in the street are invited to take an active part in the ongoing construction of the show. This approach derives equally from video game culture and the critical art theory of relational aesthetics.
As design is not always tangible and necessarily related to real products, on June 9th from 6pm – 9pm, the young Thai Fabrica designer Prima Chakrabandhu will present a unique design performance. An unusual way to experience and taste ice–cream which will be proposed to colette visitors in a wide range of unknown flavours, original decorations and new colours.
Posted by michelle at June 13, 2006 04:09 PM
