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Above: Video of the performance.

Une Région, mais pas Centrale (A Region, but not Central) is inspired by Michael Snow’s seminal video art, La Région Centrale (Snow, 1970). In Snow’s work a camera is mounted to a pre-programmed robotic rig which allows the camera to move around two axis and film the surrounding landscape. The landscape is familiar and yet as a result of how it’s filmed becomes alien.

Above: La Région Centrale by Michael Snow (1971).

Une Région, mais pas Centrale reinterprets the work for the landscape of Second Life. Instead of a robotic rig my representation moves around three axis within the ‘virtual’ space and becomes a camera through which the viewer sees the HUMlab region. In addition to seeing through my representations monocular ‘eye’ the viewer sees the location of my representation within the region revealing both the seen and the mechanism of seeing.

Choreographed movements are decided ad-hoc by a controller software, external to Second Life, automating my representations movements. The landscape, already alien, unreal, ‘virtual’ becomes even more so as it’s seen in detail through patterns of observation that are programmed and yet without a clear objective. Similar to Snow’s thoughts on his own work which could be a probe to another world, here my representation becomes a probe for the viewer to a ‘virtual’ world.

Sound for the performance is atmospheric audio taken from Second Life and reworked live in a number of ways.

Above: Images of the performance at Yoshikaze “Up-In-The-Air” Second Life Residency in Second Life. Click to view.

Above: Images of the software used to automate movement and generate audio.

To view more images of this work and others from the Yoshikaze “Up-In-The-Air” Second Life Residency please see the Yoshikaze Residency set on Flickr.