Dual - Digital Art at Nottingham Playhouse

Digital Art at Nottingham Playhouse

The Cutting Room presents Dual, a digital exhibition at Nottingham Playhouse to compliment The Importance of Being Earnest.


After the successful launch of the Digital Stage Art programme at Nottingham Playhouse earlier this year, Dual is the second exhibition from The Cutting Room. The Cutting Room is working in partnership with Nottingham Playhouse for 2012 to deliver a new digital arts programme to encourage the growth and development for digital arts within the East Midlands.

Dual brings together an exciting mix of digital artists who explore the virtual and physical worlds we inhabit. Looking at artists who offer portals to virtual realms, telematic film sets and interactive installations, Dual is inspired by Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The idea of multiple identities has become common place in modern life particularly with the advances of digital technologies which allow for the creation of alter egos that give rise to new online cultures. Dual showcases artists who explore the crossovers between the virtual and physical worlds we inhabit. Their works begin to question the use of modern digital devices and how they enable us to transform and interact within these digital spaces.
Dual sees the launch of Deconstructed Metaverse - a new commission by Michael Takeo Magruder and his team – enables visitors to explore a seemingly boundless ‘living’ virtual realm which is wholly contained within a single microchip.
The piece opens up the world of a computer generated virtual environment and creatively dissects the digital technologies that are taken for granted behind it. Offering audiences a glimpse behind the wires and coding Deconstructed Metaverse transforms Nottingham Playhouse’s top floor with access points that display the deconstructed systems that allow the viewer to occupy an avatar and interact with the ‘living’ online world they see before them.

Audiences can step into a virtual forest and navigate their very own avatar within Mirror on the Screen with Paul Sermon and Charlotte Gould. This exciting new piece of work uses a telematic film set (an advanced blue screen technology that transports guests into a TV set). Guests get the opportunity to sit in a blue screen set with a remote control, before them they will see a TV with a small camera on top which has captured their image and applied their face to an avatar in a virtual world. Teleported through the screen viewers are transformed into an avatar where they are able to confront other avatars and coexist in the same enchanted forest environment in a live interactive public video installation.
Local artist Brendan Oliver tracks and converts audience’s skeletal movements into computer generated particles which are projected within the space in Particulation. Brendan has been developing software that monitors the movements of the individual limbs and positions of the viewer's body and uses this data to control and render particle systems that react to the speed and velocity of the viewer’s movements, changing in size and colour. Particulation looks to explore the viewer's relationship with this kind of artwork and encourages them to behave in a manner not normally experienced within a traditional exhibition environment.
The exhibition also sees a film by Kim Stewart, Sigma 6 one of the emerging artists from the WEYA Festival, with one thousand artists being selected from across the globe, WEYA is the first of its kind and a new exciting event taking place in Nottingham.

Best of CAST Commission
To encourage the next generation of artists, Digital Stage is also offering a supporting film programme to enable emerging artists to present their work. Shortlisted artists will be automatically entered for the Best of CAST Commission at the end of the year, to make a funded film.

Digital Stage also offers a free educational programme of workshops alongside each exhibition for youths from local schools to come and engage with the show.

Clare Harris from The Cutting Room, said: “It has been a real privilege to be able to produce a new digital arts programme in Nottingham, particularly at a venue known for its cutting edge and diverse work. We can’t wait to see the launch of the Dual exhibition as the line-up of artists that we will be presenting are some of the best that we have ever worked with. Their work is exceptionally exciting, playful and extremely clever and is certainly a show not to be missed.”

For more details about the programme please visit the website: the-cutting-room.org


Image: Michael Takeo Magruder - Deconstructed Metaverse, The Endless Sea Front 2012