Below is a composite flat screen simulation of the installation. It gives only an imperfect impression of how the installation is supposed to be experienced as it cannot convey the spatial relationship between the characters, the landscape and the audience (see here) . The dispersed large screens in the gallery create an immersive experience with surround sound. Please look at the Installation page, where you will see stills and a walk through of the gallery event. The environment was dressed to create the experience of being in an ancient Greek olive grove – with six olive trees, and an entrance corridor lined with plinths containing bowls of lemons. To see Ben Morson’s designs for different layouts of the space, please look here. For the screening, we cleared the rights for the stock footage and used the master shots (i.e. got rid of the identifying time code banners at the foot of the screens. Dai Shell produced a beautiful dubbed soundtrack and we also colour corrected the various screen movies.
This Vimeo video represents the drama and choices section of the installation:
Note that these videos my be viewed in HD, but only via the Vimeo website. To do this, click on the ‘Vimeo’ logo in the bottom right hand corner of the video tile
The five installation screens are mapped to the five tiles of the montage thus:
At the end of the drama (the above video), when Tiresias was urging the audience to choose an ending, viewers were able to select one of three endings below from a touch sensitive CHOICE SCREEN (see plates 6 – 8 of the Installation page). The ending was triggered by the largest number of people touching the particular option. Other methods of audience involvement, such as voting with pebbles in amphorae, as in Ancient Greece, would be possible.
| Leave Echo and Narcissus to their fates Man has no faith and no free will. What will be will be |
Leave it to the gods Put your faith in a higher power and let the gods decide |
Save Echo and Narcissus yourselves Take some responsibility for the world around you |