Intimate transactions (stage 2)

Description

Intimate Transactions was a research project developed in three distinct stages and outcomes between 2003 and 2005. Stage 2 was a radical departure from Stage 1 (2003) and was developed and presented during 2004. It cross-fertlised knowledges of performance and media arts in order to create a range of highly embodied interactive experiences for participants. Its outcome was a dual site interactive installation allowing two people to interact within a complex, generative, audiovisual environment by simply shifting their balance of bodyweight and backpressure. This involved the design of an entirely new tangible interface system which, via the use of back and feet pressure, allowed participants to control this server-driven, telepresent software work.-----
Intimate Transactions (Stage 2) developed a new interaction modality that focused upon active relationship building between two participants separated by distance but linked through network communications. Through a technologically mediated, avatar-based game play participants were able to conduct mutually beneficial ‘Intimate Transactions’ – thereby establishing indirect, embodied dialogue both with each other and a range of computational creatures inhabiting their parallel virtual spaces.-----
This work engendered improved understandings of cultural and ecological co dependencies by allowing participants to understand the affects of their ‘action at a distance’, both upon each other and the creatures and virtual environments of which they were a part. By strongly promoting a shared sense of embodied sensation the work also hinted at the need for, and possibility of, personal and collective re-imaging in order to evolve a commonly beneficial environment.