{Interactive Cinema Installation -- Concept}
HOW IT WORKS
The installation consists of three projections – two smaller, skewed projections, and one larger projection maintaining 4:3 ratio. The two skewed projections will be information visualizations of data sets translated into visualization through MAX/MSP and jitter patches. The audience will be able to effect the visualization using their cell phones. The second screen will use a Flickr API that allows images to generate from key words the audience uploads again via their cell phones. This is how the audience will choose how the story proceeds. The main screen will be the mixed narrative that VJ Um Amel performs. During the installation, episodes will run in a loop.
VJ Um Amel proposes to build a 3D, interactive cinema installation about an animated cyborg, who is also an Arabic-speaking mother. Conceptually, this work stitches together dynamic, cultural concepts of ‘Media,’ ‘Migration,’ and ‘Imagination’ as they travel unevenly across cultural and linguistic boundaries. The story follows our cyber conscious trio, VJ Um Amel: an Arabic and English speaking, female cyborg, Shashi: an androgynous, male cyborg with sonic powers, and Femme Bot: VJ Um Amel’s seductive sidekick, as they move in and out of various media. These include film, web-based media, and animation from 1950s Egyptian cinema to contemporary feature-length films.The narrative structure will be framed in the style of the literary epic, 1,001 Arabian Nights by Shehrazade.
