Project "Atlantis Mission"
Project of residence and exhibitions in France & Quebec - 2006
THE VISION
Aristote declared that "it is Plato alone who made Atlantis emerged; and it is him alone who made it return to there".
This sentence reveals all the duality of western culture. But it is time to end this antique quarrels by announcing to you the recent discovered of the lost continent. Indeed, during one of my digital walks, I approached an unknown shore. The words are not enough to express what I felt by treading this devastated ground. Some vestiges, no human being, only one certainty: I was in Atlantis.
The world which appears to me was the one reported by Plato and before him by Solon, the one dreamed by Colomb and Cartier, the one usurped by a grandson of Schliemann, the one which some locate from now on in Crete, the one that, since millenia, unite ourcollective unconscious. While I was mislaid in these thoughts, the lost souls of Atlantis blew me with one voice: «It falls to you to give life again to our dream». Only that! Maybe, but with who? And by which ways?
Thus was born the project to repopulate Atlantis.
THE IDEA
The objective of this project is to carry out two transatlantic exhibitions where inhabitants of Quebec and France will navigate and converge towards this new new world, towards this commun imaginary: Atlantis.
As someone from Britany, I have the glance turned towards the sea, towards elsewhere. Cézambre island close to Malo-Saint or Anticosti island in Quebec are invitations to travel. An island makes you dream as much for itself as for the crossing which it implies. This experiment of transition implicitly links all the passengers, inhabitants or simple visitors. Thus, the object of the "Atlantis Mission" is as much to join together French people and people from Quebec on a virgin territory as to bring them to it.
St. Larent river and the Channel open the way towards an elsewhere, a return to the roots, a distant parent or simply towards imaginary. Atlantis is all that together. It is a bridge between the new one and the old world, between chaos and cosmos, material and digital, a reality and another.
Whoever took part in a game on line, was registered in a forum or has chated on messenger was already projected in a misadventure, a digital incarnation. This split will be the first step of the voyage and will balance the visitor between tangible reality and digital reality. Then, he will sail through trips in network from real world (environment of the showroom) to virtual world (Atlantis).
THE ACHIEVEMENT
The project proceeds on three territories: Quebec, France and an interval, Atlantis. The residence in Quebecois will aim to create various digital trips which will take you from the showrooms to ocean and then, to give shape to Atlantis. First, I will collect images and sounds necessary for the realization of the French trips.
Exhibitions will take place simultaneously each side of atlantic ocean. They break up into two spaces: a studio space and a projection space. The first part proposes to the visitors to take part in the casting and to become actors in the adventure. In the projection part, they are invited to navigate into interactive animations and reach Atlantis either from France, or from Quebec.
Exhibitions will be prolonged on Internet since animations will be available there.
Residence in Quebec : Animations achievement
The project will begin with a collection of pictures, vidéos and sounds between the showrooms and the shore. I.e., banks of St. Larent river on one side, and coasts of the Channel of the other. These elements will give the matter to conceive interactive scenarios. In the continuity of my work (e.g.: www.fredmurie.net > Duel in façade), I will create animations putting in scene a silhouette insert into a rhizome trip. Animations will stick to reality by using rough images and sounds, and will come off it by their ludic and shifted ways. In the same way, for the voyage towards Atlantis, the vehicle used will be a common object equipped with extraordinary functions. Indeed, it will allow the character to leave the showroom, to cross the urban environment, and to sail on the ocean which separates real world and virtual world. If all occurs well, the destination of this voyage will be Atlantis. Thus will take shape the lost continent.
Exhibitions in France and in Quebec : Casting and interactive projection
During the exhibition, before projection, the visitors will be invited to take part in the casting. They will build a misadventure while crossing studio space. As a photomaton, alone, in couple or small group, they will take their portrait under various angles then, they will record their name (pseudo or real). These treated elements will be validated and integrated progressively into the starting interface.
Animation will be projected on screen and controllable by the visitors from an original interactive terminal. Settling in reality to be better diverted from it, here is the strategy applied to the iron-mouse, hybrid object between banal domestic instrument and technological tool (www.fredmurie.net > iron wire). On this principle, I will choose an object in relation with the animation's vehicle to allow the spect-actor to navigate through projection. The interface will propose to select a character in the bank of misadventures available. Then, he will choose the starting point (Quebec or France) before plunging towards Atlantis...
