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[ZKM_ Media Theater :: 12/20/2002 - 01/12/2003
opening :: Thu, 12/19/2002, 7pm]
Produced at the ZKM | Institute for Visual Media
with financial support by Film Victoria’s Digital Media Fund,
Australia Council, Australian Federal Government’s Arts Advisory
Body and iCINEMA Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, University
of New South Wales
Pentimento was produced as an interactive video
installation and interactive DVD-ROM during Dennis Del Favero's
Research Fellowship at ZKM in 2001. The Interactive Video Installation
comprises an 8 metre square room with integrated vision based motion
detection system articulated to a computer narrative database which
interacts with the viewer's movements. The results of these interactions
are delivered across four separate projection and five discrete
acoustic systems within the installation room.
The project explores a news report detailing the discovery of an
unidentified body in bushland on the outskirts of Sydney. A young
man and woman are arrested. They accuse each other of murdering
their father whom they allege was sexually abusing them. The crime
is reconstructed by means of the specific patterns of viewer and
database interactions. These interactions evoke a large scale and
evolving memory whose fragments comprise the separate narrative
fragments of each of the protagonists - father, brother, sister
and the murder scene itself. Each of the four separate projection
and acoustic systems can be operated both independently and in synchrony
with the others in a number of diverse and complex patterns. At
a simple level a viewer is be able to sequentially evoke the various
narratives of each of the protagonists as they pass each of the
separate screens. At a more complex level viewers can simultaneously
evoke the non-synchronic narratives of all protagonists creating
a complex cascade of memories across all the screens. In each of
these scenarios the viewers precipitate different memory modalities
as they attempt to resolve the motivations surrounding the murder.
Nevertheless nagging difficulties remain for the viewers. Some of
the memories suggest that the father may not be the murder victim
but is one of the perpetrators. Other memories suggest that all
three protagonists may be dead and the viewers are navigating a
violent struggle amongst the dead.
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