[artinfo] WORLD OF AWE: Portal, a net.dance

[by way of Adele Eisenstein <adele at c3.hu>]

World of Awe: PORTAL
A net.dance

WORK >> http://www.turbulence.org/Works/yael
INTERVIEW >> http://www.turbulence.org/interviews/portal.html

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Yael Kanarek. New media artist
Evann Siebens, Dance filmmaker
Yoav Gal, Composer
Meeyoung Kim, Flash production
Sarah Rivkin, Vocals
Dawn Weisberg, Costume designer

Viewing requirements: Flash 6 and high bandwidth
Contact: portal at worldofawe.net
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We are pleased to announce the launch of the World of Awe
projectÑPORTAL. The interactive net.dance was commissioned by
Turbulence.org with funding from the Jerome Foundation. PORTAL
follows a traveler passing from the physical world to a virtual
world called the Sunset/Sunrise in search for a lost treasure.
The narrative is drawn from a travel log found in Chapter 2 of
the Traveler's Journal. The work unfolds in 3 parts:

:: PART 1: 419 East 6th Street
The dynamic street dancefilm introduces the traveler in goggles
and gear, surrounded by the activity of a New York City street.
Trying to find a way beyond the gate, she uses dance as the key.
A single shot breaks into twelve animations initiating original
music created on an old Atari 800XL computer. Climb over the
gate.

:: PART 2: In Between Worlds
What is the space in between worlds? The traveler is now nude,
the "box" she's in is not really a box but a diagram of a boxÉan
idea. That box is inside the movie frame, inside the browser
window, inside the screen, inside the computer, inside the room
where the viewer sits, which is inside the house or building.
Spaces nested within spaces, boxes nested within boxes and
somewhere in this sequence there is a traveler and a viewer. Can
they connect?

:: PART 3: In the Sunset/Sunrise
The traveler enters the Sunset/SunriseÑa digital desert terrain.
Like the music, her dance is manifested in loops, repetitions and
multiplications. She studies her relationship to the environment
through her movementsÑhow to be analog in the digital, gain and
loose resolutions, and multiply oneself. The twelve minutes long
polyphonic music composition uses the digitally manipulated voice
of a single soprano to generate many voices, constructing a vocal
portrait of the traveler, simultaneously as one and many. A sense
of a lonely transcendence in a timeless terrain emerges as the
voices reiterate the textual signature that is found at the end
of each letter written by the traveler to the lover in the
Traveler's Journal:

"Yours forever
Your sunset/sunrise forever yours
Yours forever yours."

The traveler departs in pursue of the lost treasure. Like the
lover, the viewer is left behind somewhere in the Sunset/Sunrise.


ABOUT WORLD OF AWE
URL: http://www.worldofawe.net

Conceived in 1995, World of Awe is an umbrella schema that
generates multiple, essentially connected projects through a
matrix of artistic practices primarily within the digital arts
practices. World of Awe operates in the post media sense: The
abstract idea materializes through a variety of projects. Each
project within the mainframe redefines, reappropriates and
reinforms the sibling projects. Over time visitors can become
immersed in an environment that is growing synergistically.

At the core of World of Awe is The JournalÑan original narrative
that uses the ancient genre of the traveler's tale to explore the
connections between storytelling, travel, memory and technology.
The narrative uses a personal journey as an exploration of the
deserted places of memory and the imagination, drawing parallels
between our mind and technologyÑbe it through the lament over the
absence of the lover or a comical declaration of loyalty to the
floppy disk.


BIOGRAPHIES

Yael Kanarek is a new media artist. The recipient of numerous
grants, she has been exhibiting internationally. World of Awe was
included in the Whitney Biennial 2002.

Evann Siebens is a dance filmmaker. Her film American Aloha will
be broadcast on PBS' documentary series P.O.V. (point of view)
this summer, while the installation image/Word.not_a_pipe= will
be shown at the Frankfurt Ballet this year.

Yoav Gal is a composer who specializes in New Opera. A recent
premiere of his opera "the Dwarf" was featured in the New York
Times article from January 24, 2003: 'Never Say Die in Indie
Opera.'

Meeyoung Kim is currently a candidate for MFA degree in Computer
Art at School of Visual Arts, focusing on Data Visualization
design. Her works primarily deal with information aesthetic, data
visualization, digital media and conceptual art.