spatial relationships

"'Portal' is an interactive net.dance in three parts that follows a traveler passing from the physical world to a virtual world called the Sunset/Sunrise. The work touches on the spatial and aesthetic relationship between virtual and physical spaces, as well as the relationship between user and digital content. Cinematic and kinetic, the traveler uses dance as the main mode of communication and means to travel between worlds. This ambiguity between the real and unreal is reflected in the content: analog footage is mixed with digital resolutions as the figure moves from a New York City street to a digitally created desert landscape. Traditional dance film techniques, as seen in kinesthetic editing and image creation, are combined with interactivity and screen design."--From Turbulence

 lens began as a study piece relating to work-in-progress for the four-wall VR Cave at Brown University. It demonstrates how literal materiality - the surfaces of letters composing the texts of 'lens' itself - can, in a simple illusory 3D space, subvert our familiar experiences and assumptions concerning surfaces of inscription. For example, by making a letter large enough within the programmatic structures of lens, the region of colour defining the letter-shape becomes an entirely different type of surface - it becomes a surface of inscription for other texts that had been perceived 'underlying' it. In doing so, literal surfaces subvert our experience of space and relative distance. Surfaces that were 'in front' now form surfaces for other texts. They may even become other 'spaces' within which writing drifts. Letters both delineate and redefine spatial relationships.

No great claims are made for the aesthetic or literary value of lens in its present form. It is technically simple and has technical constraints. In the QuickTime version, there is no attempt to render a genuine illusion of 3D space (no 3D graphics are employed). 'Distance' is rendered by scale alone, and scaling of fonts (via sprites) in QuickTime still leaves much to be desired.

(Source: Author's description on the project site)