Information
Jeffrey Shaw >
»Points of View I«, 1983
Co-Workers & Funding:
Software: Larry Abel (1983), Torsten Ziegler (1999)Hardware: Tat van Vark and Charly Jungbauer (1983), Armin Steinke (1999)
Produced under the auspices of the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Technology
Descriptions & Essays
Points of View was a 'theatre of signs' with both stage and protagonists being provided by a three-dimensional computer graphics simulation that was video projected onto a large screen in front of a seated audience. The action of the work was controlled by one member of the audience using two specially made joysticks. Embodying techniques developed for flight simulation, this work gave the operator the ability to interactively move his virtual point of view 360 degrees around the stage, 90 degrees up and down from ground level to aerial view, and forwards and backwards from a far distance to the centre of the stage. The representation of the actors on the stage was derived from the ancient Egyptian alphabet - each figure was a hieroglyphic character. This constellation of signs was used to articulate a world model with an underlying set of physical and conceptual relationships. Sixteen sound tracks - mostly spoken texts - were interactively linked to the image via the same joystick that controlled the visual movements. Functioning like an audio mixer, this modulated the relative volume of the various voices with respect to the changing spatial positions taken by the viewer. Here again an intrinsic conceptual structure was articulated in the spatial mapping of these sound tracks to four positions on four levels of a semi-sphere.
Literature
Exhibitions & Events