Video, 01:27 min loop
"[..] In 1844, Samuel Morse invented Morse code, enabling people to communicate instantly over long distances [..] A few years later, a teenage girl called Kate Fox in Rochester, New York began communicating with the spirit of a murdered peddlar by rapping on the walls of her house, using her own crude alphanumerical system, a kind of "folk" appropriation of Morse code. [..] Her psychic activities caused a sensation parallel to the telegraph, sparking the New American Spiritualist Movement, which is still in existence today."
(Oursler in Neri, 2001)
source: The Presence Project: Tony Oursler, 22/09/2006
Psychic and metaphysic contacts in relation to history of telecommunications inspire Tony Oursler to create Influence Machine (2000). Oursler uses video projections of figures such as the Fox sisters or ghosts, telling stories form another spatiotemporal dimension, onto trees and smoke.
tr@nsfer is a reference on Tony Oursler's work. The sound messages originate from the IBM database, www.ibm.com, they refer to the issue of time and they are addressed to the user by the machine. Forests and trees, as a space of ghosts' appearance, are becoming a space of virtual characters' appearance that are found on the internet. The female figure relives moments of her online function and interaction with internet users, transferring emotions such as "waiting", "inquiry", "duration".
Concept, Video: Dimitrios Fotiou
Performance: Pinelopi Drakou
Sound: Soundrangers Sound Effects
Below is a video of how tr@nsfer's projection looks like.
Video installation, dimentions variable
Dimitrios Fotiou was Born in Ioannina, Greece, in 1970, he studied Sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Athens (1994-2000). He was awarded a scholarship by the State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) and in 2001 he completed his postgraduate studies in Contemporary Sculpture at the Wimbledon School of Arts, London.
He engaged in life sculpture and projects which focus on communication through forms and shapes and aim to act as an internal language. He did research for video installations in relation to monuments and people who are heard in public today and he has produced work using video projections onto objects, casts and environments. In his recent projects he aims is to combine sculpture and web technology. He produces digital work in combination to fine art concepts and practice. The result may take place either on the web or in the real space.
He has participated in many group exhibitions such as CyberArts 2005, Prix Ars Electronica 2005, WB05 - Web Biennial 2005 - Biennial on the World Wide Web and he has done two solo shows. For more information about his work visit www.fotiou.net