World Wide Ensemble
Antoine Schmitt, 2006.
Computer, interactive and generative audio and visual program, plasma screen, speakers, amplifier, trackball.
In World Wide Ensemble, an endless landscape of frenetic audio and visual automatas, all entangled in one another, slowly scrolls before the eyes of the viewer, through a window cut in the wall. The image is large and bright, the sound is very present. The trackball, situated on the side of the window, allows the visitor to change the direction of the movement, to explore other parts of this “planet seen from a satellite’s window” (this is the only interaction). The trackball is situated far enough of the window so that the spectator has to step back to contemplate the result of his action. The displacement is always very slow, while the mechanical elements oscillate frantically. By moving in one direction and then the opposite direction, the viewer may notice that the landscape has changed in the meantime, hinting at a generative and unstable nature of the objects. There exists also a slight and evolving desynchronicity between sounds and images. : the World Wide Ensemble is a saturated but unstable universe.
Between September and November 2006, French artist Antoine Schmitt made an installation based on a work that had previously been realized as a web application, with financial support provided by the “Ambassade de France” in Netherlands.
In The World Wide Ensemble, the viewer sees an endless landscape of connected, nervously oscillating audiovisual automata slowly moving past. The viewer can use the mouse to manipulate the work’s direction of movement and can thereby view other parts of the whole. By reversing the direction of movement, the viewer can see that the system keeps changing, and thus the generative and unstable nature of the system becomes clear. Combined with the asynchronism between the sound and the images of the automata, this creates a strong feeling of disorientation in the viewer.
In his residency at V2_, Schmitt developed a more complex audiovisual environment for the work, comprising a trackball-based navigation system and a physical setting in which the work can be exhibited. The resulting installation, The World Wide Ensemble, was shown at DEAF07.
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