soft where hard dither(ing) website & exhibition of installation works by quicksilver@artoz.com Rose Anne McGreevy John Tonkin Jillian Hayden Jennifer O'Brien A 1999 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival Event INVITATION http://www.spin.net.au/~mmcc/invite.html WEBSITE http://www.spin.net.au/~mmcc/index.html _______________________________________________________ >specificity~fluidity< >dys+function< >virtualÐhard< soft where hard dither(ing) CHRISSIE COTTER GALLERY Pidcock St Camperdown NSW Australia 10th - 21st February 1999 WED - SUN MIDDAY - 6PM OPENING THURSDAY 11TH FEB 6PM - 8PM Is the electronic screen like an itch? Is technology living up to its promise of bringing us together? Can we survive the tension between the virtual & the real? These questions and many more are posed in the project soft where hard dither(ing) which consists of an exhibition of installations and website featuring new works by quicksilver@artoz.com, John Tonkin, Rose Anne McGreevy, Jennifer O'Brien and Jillian Hayden. The project aims to provide an opportunity to elaborate and reflect on some current contributions of GLBT and queer artists to the development of digitally mediated culture(s), to explore the expanding changes occurring in art production through contemporary technologies. Artists contributing to this project embrace these tools in numerous ways conceptually and pragmatically. "sexBot - sex talk for the terminally shy" by John Tonkin sexBot is an exploration into the nature of technologically mediated liaisons. It seems the more alienating a communication technology; the more its users are able to project their own erotic fantasies onto the experience. Using voice recognition and synthesis technologies sexBot is an absurdly over-engineered intercom system interconnecting two cubicles. Running simultaneously on two networked computers, each user's speech is converted to text, which is passed to the other computer and then converted back into synthetic speech. This system has two major features; the resulting voices are anonymous and the recognition process introduces significant errors into the dialogue. If either user neglects the conversation, sexBot attempts to construct responses using fragments of online transcripts gathered from gay web chat, IRC and MOOs. If you engage with this flirtation, the dialogue will become progressively more raunchy, hopefully reaching some sort of closure. When both cubicles are empty sexBot talks dirty to itself. "TechnoProvera" by Rose Anne McGreevy examines the relationship between the virtual reality of the electronic screen and the physicality of the drawing, images on the wall. Can they sit together? Does the electronic screen become like an itch if one looks at and engages emotionally, psychologically with the large drawing/image? There are three elements, an image drawn directly onto the wall with charcoal and pigment, a recessed light box which contains a sculptural figure and an interactive piece installed on a computer nearby. MirrorWound quicksilver@artoz.com MirrorWound is The artist's virtual body. This Mardi Gras, Quicksilver is performing a virtual strip tease for you. The vector based flash animations are retina burn eyecandy, superficial flesh that hangs around like a somnia animalia of eir gay existence. "Episodes" one through to five are linear in so far as they play sequentially, six and seven are the first of the MirrorWound "spaces", and explore notions of non-linear navigation and interactivity (via a variety of Cgi scripts which adjust the spaces real time in response to user input). The real design behind MirrorWound is hidden in the source code, in the ways quicksilver has linked the content signifiers (library images in the flash animations, textual memory rooms, intersecting storylines) so they function as an autonomous model of Queer Experience. In the "virtual cloakroom" Jillian Hayden and Jennifer O'Brien invite us to transgress and peek into the "belongings" of others. The counter of this cloak room is a large screen. The user interacts with the virtual attendant via a mouse.You are invited to peek into the items held in the cloak room. When the viewer selects any of these the attendant makes a comment and then a story of the cloaked item is revealed. Sift through codes via networks, screens, keyboards and voice. This project is supported by Mac's Place (Chatswood), Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, the National Association of Visual Artists through the Pat Corrigan and marketing grants, Professional Computer Rentals Sydney as well as Marrickville Council. For further information, please contact Jillian Hayden or Jennifer O'Brien ph: +61 2 95577665 email: softerharder@yahoo.com