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Josephine Starrs
and Leon Cmielewski are Australian artists who have been working together
since1993. In 1997 they lived in Berlin at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien where
they made Diagnostic Tools for the New Millenium. They were recently
artists in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts working on an interactive
animation, "Dream Kitchen". Leon has a background in design, film and animation. His short film "Writers Block" has been screened at several international film festivals. Josephine works in photography, video and new media and is a member of the cyberfeminism collective VNS Matrix whose early performance work in virtual communities used irony and humour to reveal the gendered biases hard wired into computer culture. (http://sysx.apana.org.au/artists/vns/). |
| Diagnostic
Tools for the New Millenium Diagnostic Tools for the New Millenium is a set of vapourware tools designed for the new age. When this post optimist, post modernist, post feminist age crashes, what tools will be needed to verify our corrupted psyches? Throughout the Webster we engage the audience in a dialogue about privacy issues such as surveillance, consumer profiling and intimacy on the internet, while creating an environment full of play and poetry. We are interested in the way our experiences, especially in the western world are increasingly mediated by new technologies and wish to investigate the effect this phenomena is having on our sense of self. The information gathered from the Webster is used in our research and is also fed into our interactive installations which we have had on public display in Berlin, Sydney and Banff, Canada. One example is the Fuzzy Love Dating Service: access to the Fuzzy Love Data Base is strictly limited to those who have already surrendered their data to it. The application allows the user to grab their image (still video grab) and enter various personal data into the service. This information automatically becomes part of a browsable data base and the image and information from other users can then be output to a colour printer. The user can then contact other users for non art related activities. Another example is the Paranoia Diagnostic Tool: this application is a short interactive (viewing time about 8 minutes). A series of short animations allows the user to 'build' an interface where sampled video and sound grabs of paranoia and fear are accessed......the last image the user sees is a video of themselves at the console filmed through a hidden surveillance camera. |
