David
Pledger, Jeffrey Shaw
2004
Interactive Installation
Presented in a 360 degree purpose-built cinematic environment, ten
people are forever doomed to repeat nine minutes of their lives. Exploring
terrain that is at once spiritual, moral, ethical, psychological and
physical, this ingeniously crafted artwork is driven by any member
of the public who, as the free radical user-director, reveals the
secrets embedded in the interconnected stories.
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Eavesdrop operated using platform-module |
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Eavesdrop is a multi-narrative mediation of psychological states in
and around the theme of moral inertia. The stories take their cue from
middle Australia and talk around, speak to, allude and confront a
certain condition of morality.
The characters are all caught in a loop wherein they are doomed to
repeat a certain nine minutes of their lives. Each narrative (life) emphasises
a spiritual, moral, ethical, psychological or physical landscape:
A young man tries to escape the suburbs; a minor celebrity wrestles
with his conscience; an elderly couple work out how they might end
their lives; a political activist is intent on a new revolution; two
young boys enact negligence upon themselves; a woman uses cosmetic
surgery to find an identity, a middle-aged man is undone by the grief
of unrequited love.
The stories play out in a literal-metaphorical space, at once a club
and a purgatory. Some of the characters have been here a long time,
and their familiarity with their surroundings is telling. Others have
only just arrived and they play their immediate passing over and over
again in search of some flicker of awareness. The stories are interconnected
through their unity of time and place, and in some cases there are
direct narrative cross-overs. A band plays throughout
the nine minute duration, and the patrons are obliged to participate
in singing-and-dancing choruses. A waiter provides a unifying presence
in all the narratives and sometimes he is simultaneously present in
several of the narratives. He is the agent of a space that is the
central character of the project.
Special to this space is the ability to enter into the private, interior
landscapes of each of the characters. These interior landscapes convey
a compressed sense of the emotional states the characters are experiencing.
Get too close to any of the characters and the spectator will be bumped
into this interior life without warning.
In this way, Eavesdrop is intended to work on three layers: the interior
landscapes of the characters, their public narratives, and the engagement
with the spectator through the simple interactive medium of zoom and
pan functions on a platform-module that the user employs to navigate
the space.
Production: not
yet it's difficult, Producer: Martin Thiele
Credits:
Director and Writer: David Pledger
Interactive Cinema Concept and Installation Design: Jeffrey Shaw
Producer: not yet it’s difficult (NYID), Martin Thiele
Cinematographic Production: Michael Williams, Rocco Fasano, Paul Jackson, Steve Adam, Danielle Harrison,
Angela Conte
Cinematographic Design & Post Production: Greg Ferris
Composer: Boris Conley
Application Software: Adolf Mathias
Sound Design: Torsten Beltschner
iCinema Production: Matthew McGinity, Joachim Tesch
Industry Partners: The Australian National Memorial Theatre, St Kilda, Melbourne; SIAL Sound Studios, RMIT; Auspicious Arts Projects
Funded by the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals through the Major Festivals Initiative of the Australia Council; Melbourne
International Arts Festival, Brisbane
Festival and Sydney
Festival; the Goethe Institute Sydney, and in association the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
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