Landscape One

Paysage No. 1/Landscape One
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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 Montreal's 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 visitor's 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/dicommunication between people with movements through space as manifestation of its nature; successfull forms of communication will offer visitors more varied inroads into more remote places.

(Luc Courchesne)