Human Avatars is a media art installation that creates a visual dialogue between real and virtual participants on two networked stages:
Visitors in the exhibition space discover a small wooden hut, which they are invited to enter. A live image of their body inside is projected into a remote model version of the hut, complete with model furniture, where other visitors can make contact with the tiny moving figures by peeping through a small window. Yet unaware that a second camera inside displays their peering faces back on the window of the big shed, with their eyes now overshadowing the participants inside.
The architecture and the scenario appear very playful, but the immediate interactive experience is controversial, once the voyeuristic strategy behind the idyllic backdrop becomes evident - indirectly hinting at rather ambivalent and melancholic side effects of surveillance and visual
control as an intrinsic part of media and entertainment.
With an installation soundtrack by Vini Reilly, commissioned for the Manchester premiere in 2005.
