Rationale:
The user (we'll call him User A) enters the first small room in which they are presented with a plinth and switch. They activate the switch turning on the light-box maze which is concealed by a door and is now evident from the light emitted from it. The glow entices them to enter the maze. This maze is made of 8ft high light boxes. The process of an agent activating a switch that turns on a light is, for me, represents the core basics of interaction. It is immediate causality, the user interacting with an interface i.e. the switch to produce a result i.e. light. This also has religious connotations; God said "let there be light" and there was light. The maze itself is a literal metaphor for totalitarian interactivity. Once inside, the participant has little choice but to continue until they complete it. This is a physical interpretation of how media manipulate the user, through choice and is coerced into interaction through promises and rewards. Hence with this installation the audience is seduced into the maze via the attractive bright light-boxes of the maze, which they themselves have switched on. They're goal is freedom, beckoning the questions; when in the maze of media how much free will does the user have? In addition to the ubiquity of media in general throughout our everyday life, how much choice do we have with such engaging and demanding digital media? Simply finishing the maze and escaping the intense enclosed space created by the light boxes. On exiting the user now has a chance to climb the stairs to a low light observation booth two floors up. Here they are presented with another switch which turns off the maze light-boxes and simultaneously buzzes the next entrant (User B) into the small primary room. Now User A can look down on the divine design they have just experienced, completed and in a sense created though the turning on of the maze, and watch User B struggle through the same process; the creation of a spectacle, directly experiencing that spectacle and finally observing that spectacle being experience by another. There is a microphone linked up to an intercom throughout the maze that allows User A to communicate to User B, directing him or her positively or negatively. This is the participant’s second reward; first comes freedom, then control from above; a small taste of God-like omnipresence and omnipotence.
2 comments:
what would the user gain from the ecperience? do you think by taking pert/performing the task that the installation requires they will gain an understanding of what the work is about? or is this less relevent because they are a user and you the creator, the same as in all other new media?
interesting idea
True, there would be no explanation to the meaning of the piece. Perhaps they would enjoy the process of completing the maze and then looking back over it, after the helplessness of being trapped to the potential power they then have of controlling someone else.
Really its more about your latter point. They are the user, who i as the producer, am controlling and as long as they engage with the piece, which they have to do in order to experience it at all, that is where the meaning lies. They dont have to understand why, they just have to do.
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