Sonic Acts XII: Jeffery Shaw on Interactivity and Immersion

Jeffery Shaw, a pioneer in his use of interactivity and immersion in his installations, gave a talk about his work in the De Balie main hall this afternoon. Shaw’s work is the next logical step in the conference series after Erkki Huhtamo’s presentation on The Diorama: Revisited. He started off with the quote, (in part)”…it is the type of image produced that determines the narrative, not the reverse…” from Raul Ruiz, “Poetics of Cinema”, Editions Dis Voir, Paris, 1995.

I think this adequately summarizes both Shaw’s work and his method. Shaw’s work seems to setup situations in which the narrative building tendencies of the human mind are completely stimulated. But his work is still rendered from only one specific location, the center, which has the interesting side-effect, he noted, of being extremely disconcerting for those not standing directly in the center. they are watching a scene move and shift from someone else’s perspective. I think this is one of most powerful effects of his works.

see here and here for more of his work.