(2007) interactive media installation
created by Clare Shanahan and Brian Sherry
There has been a lot of debate around the notion of cyberspace as a community. The term community itself is now conceptualized not in terms of physical proximity but in terms of social networks. Chatrooms and other virtual meeting points are vast becoming the new singles bar of today. We immerse ourselves in these alternative spaces to escape problems, issues or the shortcomings within our physical lives.
This is an interactive art piece that allows you to walk through the materialised chatroom. Other people are represented with a ‘smiley’ for a face, this is how emotion is represented in text in cyberspace. This piece aims to illustrate the vast amount of communication the internet provides, but simultaneously portraying how flat the whole process is. We spend more time interfacing with each other via computer screens than actually looking into the face of our fellow human beings.
By creating an interactive simulation that parodies the real world, we have to examine the pointlessness of immersing oneself in a fantasy world. Can walking around a virtual world populated by strangers be more or less fulfilling than interacting with people in a real world?
This is an interactive art piece that allows you to walk through the materialised chatroom. Other people are represented with a ‘smiley’ for a face, this is how emotion is represented in text in cyberspace. This piece aims to illustrate the vast amount of communication the internet provides, but simultaneously portraying how flat the whole process is. We spend more time interfacing with each other via computer screens than actually looking into the face of our fellow human beings.
By creating an interactive simulation that parodies the real world, we have to examine the pointlessness of immersing oneself in a fantasy world. Can walking around a virtual world populated by strangers be more or less fulfilling than interacting with people in a real world?
