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June 27, 2007

Tina Gonsalves' "Feel_Insula"

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Stillness, Emotions and Hypnosis

Tina Gonsalves' Feel_Insula: An interactive Installation about Stillness, Emotions and Hypnosis :: At New Greenham Arts, The Corn Exchange, 113 Lindenmuth Way, New Greenham Park, Newbury, Berks, RG19 6HN UK :: Preview: Sunday 1 July 2007 12-2pm :: From June 28 - August 3 :: 10am-5pm; Thursday (10am-8pm; Saturdays by appointment).

Feel.Insula is an intimate and vulnerable responsive video installation driven by the stillness of the audience. In a darkened space, a video is projected on the wall. It is of the artist under hypnosis. Under hypnosis, the artist is asked to re-experience potent emotional memories of her life. As soon as the viewer enters the space, the artist wakes up from hypnosis. Only after the audience is completely still does the video fall back into weaving the stories re-lived under hypnosis. FEEL_INSULA emerges from a collaboration between neuroscientist Dr Hugo Critchley and artist Tina Gonsalves, and was created over her artist in residency at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, London.

Emotion expression databases such as Karolinska and Ekman databases are commonly used with in affective neuroscientific experiments. The artist started to question the validity of these performed emotions as stimuli. In the search for more authentic emotiona; expressions, she began working with Dr. David Oakley, the Director of the Hypnosis Unit at UCL. She asked Oakley to hypnotise her in order to re-experience different potent emotional memories. Over 3 one-hour sessions, Oakley induced her into states of fearfulness, sadness, happiness and calmness. Each session was recorded using two 3 chip digital cameras focused on the artists face and also radio mic and ipod recorder. These video and audio recordings formed the basis to FEEL_INSULA.

Tina Gonsalves (AU) is currently honorary artist in residence at the Wellcome Department of Neurology at University College London. Combining diagnostic imaging, biometric sensors and mobile technologies, her installations, films for television, and software investigate emotional signatures both within the body and among interactive audiences. Since 1995 her work has shown internationally at venues including Banff Centre for the Arts (CA); Siggraph (US); International Society for the Electronic Arts 2004; European Media Arts Festival; Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (JP); Australian Centre For Photography, Sydney; Barbican (UK); Pompidou Centre (FR), Institute for Contemporary Art, London; and Australian Center for the Moving Image, Melbourne. Her music videos for Universal, BMG, EMI, and Festival Mushroom Records have been televised worldwide.

Posted by jo at June 27, 2007 12:42 PM

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