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Indepth Arts News:
"LAST WEEK! Luc Courchesne: Landscape One Interactive Viseo Panarama"
0000-00-00 until 0000-00-00
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
Helsinki, ,
FI Finland
commissioned by
NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo, 1997
The canadian media artist creates a summery park,
consisting of a large landscape projected onto four
walls, in the Kontti gallery. In this virtual scenery, a
family is on a picnic together with the viewer. The
artwork leads the viewer into its space and into its own
world, according to the nature of the relationship which
is created between the people in the virtual and the real
world.
Four walls of a space are painted, with video
projectors, into a single photo realistic 360º landscape
representing a public garden. The space, set in
Montreals Mont-Royal Parc, is being visited by real
and virtual characters. If the virtual characters appear
free to come and go in the garden, real visitors will
need help to walk in and explore. For this they have to
make contact with one of the virtual character by
selecting, using voice or touch, questions or comments
from imposed sets. Questions on, for example, where
they are, what is around, where one can go from here
will engage a conversation leading to some form of
relationship. The exchange may be cut short with
everyone going back to their business or it may reach a
point where visitors will convince a character to lead
them somewhere. In such case, visitors are being
pulled through the landscape after their virtual guide
and the whole room appears to be moving in this
direction.
The dialogue between the guide and the visitor or group
goes on and defines the progression through space.
Because real visitors are using virtual characters to
steer their way through space, the nature of visitors
relationship to the character will define the space -
physical or metaphorical - that can be accessed. There
are several possible destinations or outcome. Visitors
could simply be abandoned somewhere on the way if
the connection to the character is broken, or they could
be reaching a destination: a lookout or a forbidden
boundary.
This journey through space is also a journey through
words, meanings, language, subjectivity. It highlights
not only the physical world in which this is happening
but also its diverse meanings and functions to different
people. The experience is about
communication/discommunication between people with
movements through space as manifestation of its
nature; successful forms of communication will offer
visitors more varied inroads into more remote places.
Luc Courchesne
Landscape One is a multi-user interactive panoramic
video installation using 5 networked computers with
touch pads, micro-phones and motion detectors, 4
laserdisc players and 4 video projectors.
Created by Luc Courchesne in Montreal in 1997 with
support from the ICC - InterCommunication Center,
Tokyo.
The function of fine arts has always been to build
bridges between our psychophysical, personal interface
and technology-based environment i. e. culture.
Canadian Luc Courchesne is a media artist who is
concentrating on this relationship turning it into an
interaction between men, not between man and
machine. The background of his work is based on
sophisticated and complicated computer environment
and yet Courchesne has been able to create a world
where we look eye to eye at people in front of the
machine, not behind it.
Portrait One (1990) is a magical work that fuses talking
head from television, portrait painting and interactive
work of art into personal communication space. Based
on this concept Courchesne has made a wide range of
works like Family Portrait (1993) and Hall of Shadows
(1996) in which he creates a social field of interactivity.
The spectator takes part in the conversation and
becomes a member of the group inside.
Perttu Rastas
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