[artinfo] See You in Walhalla – A three locational triptych - live on www.amorphy.org/imap on September 14th, 2006

[Ash Bulayev]

i-MAP (Integration of Media Art and Performance)

www.amorphy.org/imap

On April 29th, 2005, European Commission Directorate-General for  
Education and Culture had approved i-MAP as a funded, one-year  
(annual) project under the auspices of Culture 2000 Framework  
Program.  The project began on September 1st, 2005 and will culminate  
in a distributed dance/theatre performance, See You in Walhalla, on  
September 14th, 2006 in Amsterdam, Athens, Sofia and live on  
www.amorphy.org/imap.

i-MAP is a one-year interdisciplinary collaborative project  
implemented through a trans-European network of three participating  
media art organizations, dedicated to fostering new and innovative  
works of art through effective integration of interactive  
technologies and live performance practices.

i-MAP’s primary aims are to support research and analysis of new  
media technologies, education of professionals in their use, and a  
backbone for development and presentation of co-productions on a  
trans-European level.  Additionally, this project aims at opening a  
European discourse examining the way today’s society interacts with  
technology, and integrates it’s benefits on the structure of global  
communication, and the way in which digital art is changing our  
perception of the world

See You in Walhalla – A three locational triptych.

A streaming, telekinetic performance event is proposed as the closing  
phase of the project.  Through collaborative inter-media creation  
process, developed simultaneously by four teams of artists in co- 
organizing institutions (media artists, directors and choreographers,  
programmers and software developers, as well as performers of various  
mediums), a fully developed dramaturgical structure will be created  
in order to thoughtfully integrate elements of interactive media and  
new technologies with live performance practices.
An average woman stumbles on a new video game, See You in Walhalla.   
She creates her avatar.  The game’s purpose is to guide and navigate  
this avatar, born as an empty shell, through various experiences and  
journey’s taking place in an imaginary city landscape created out of  
Amsterdam, Athens and Sofia, with the final goal of making this empty  
shell into “a civilized human being”.  The problem is that while  
getting more involved with the game, our very average woman begins to  
relate to the game so much that she finds it hard to separate reality  
from the game.

Three performers, one in each city represent the avatar of the game,  
the player/owner and the confused state of the player who is facing a  
slight affliction of confusing the game with her reality.

Three performers inter-connected, a complex web of fantastical events  
seen from pre-recorded video, live-web cam and audio streams from  
Amsterdam and Sofia, interactively controlled sound and video based  
on the movements of a performer in Athens, site-specific performances  
in Sofia and Amsterdam – these components will compose the tale of  
See You in Walhalla.

Collaborative Network of Co-Organizers

· amorphy.org (Athens, Greece) - www.amorphy.org/imap
amorphy.org is a non-for-profit organization devoted to production of  
original works of live performance and installation, through constant  
pursuit of practical investigation fusing media art technologies and  
live performance practices.

· InteraktionsLabor  (Gottelborn, Germany) - www. interaktionslabor.de

InteraktionsLabor, under the direction of Dr. Johannes Birringer, is  
an organization which focuses on research in communications  
technologies, interactive media, performance and virtual environments.

· InterSpace (Sofia, Bulgaria) - www.i-space.org

InterSpace is a New Media Art Center that works for the establishment  
of a social attitude to new media art forms, through the development  
of alternative means and possibilities of artistic expression in new  
media technologies.

· De Waag (Amsterdam, Holland) - www.waag.org

Waag Society for Old and New Media is a knowledge institute operating  
on the cutting edge of culture and technology in relation to society,  
education, government and industry, established in 1994.

Associated Partners

PACT Zollverein - Essen, Goethe Institute, Red House For Culture and  
Debate, IKS, IME Research Facility, Ipsilon Production Company,  
Brunel University, i-DAT/University of Plymouth.


-----------------------------------
ash bulayev/amorphy.org
artistic director
-----------------------------------
Address:
Alopis 58, Kato Petralona
11853 Athens Greece
email:  ash at amorphy.org
web:    www.amorphy.org
mobile: + 30 6976 600 174
work:   + 30 210 34 56 341