Screen Test at Staro Rīga

An interactive public site-specific telepresent installation for Staro Rīga from November 15th to 18th 2014, designed for site-specific impromptu performance and user interaction. Staro Rīga, was a festival of light taking place during the Latvain independence celebrations and as part of the European City of Culture 2014 programme of events. This work celebrated the history of cinema, with key moments recreated as sets with references to cinematic genres, containing converged scenes and sets from the history of cinema including George Meliers "La Lune", Eisensteins "Battleship Potemkin", Casablanca and "Vertigo". The installation took live oblique camera shots from above the screens of two separate audience groups in Riga, both located on large 40m2 blue ground sheets, which then combined them on screen via a chroma-key video switcher in a single composited image. As the merged audiences started to explore this collaborative, shared telepresent space they discovered the ground beneath them, as it appeared on screen as a digital backdrop, locating them in a variety of environments. Through these playful environments the audience participants were offered the opportunity to direct and change the outcomes of this installation through an open system of interaction. These unique transitory outcomes relied entirely on the roles and performances the public participants brought to these urban screens and the experiences they chose to live out. Contextualized by their urban and commercial environments and recontextualized by a diverse array of interactive backdrops, our aim was to allow these public audiences the opportunity and agency to reclaim these urban screens.