[rohrpost] Susan Collins at the British Council in Berlin - please forward!

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Title: Susan Collins at the British Council in Berlin - please forward!

!please forward!

In Conversation
http://www.inconversation.com

In Conversation, a www/street intervention, will be hosted by the British Council in Berlin (Hackescher Markt 1, 10178 Berlin) from 24th April 2001 at 9.30pm (Berlin time) until 14th May. (A small drinks reception will be held on 24th April at 9:30pm.)

When live and located, In Conversation provides the means for two people, one in the street, and one on the Internet to engage in a live dialogue with each other. This work by Susan Collins aims to examine the boundaries and social customs of distinctly different kinds of public spaces - the street and the Internet - each with its own established rules of engagement.
Passers-by encounter an animated mouth projected onto the pavement and, through loudspeakers, can also hear voices triggered by internet users trying to strike up a conversation. If anyone replies, a concealed microphone and surveillance camera documents and transmits the responses to the website.
Through the site, Internet users view the surveillance camera image and hear the person on the street. They type messages 'live', which are then converted into speech and heard by the person on the street.
In Conversation introduces two different kinds of public space to each other, the etiquette that governs them and the people that frequent them. The project becoming an experimental exploration into how different environments and means of interaction affect not only our willingness to communicate, but the way and manner in which we do so.
For the Berlin installation the connection to the street will stay active 24 hours a day, though the projection will only be visible from dusk to dawn.

A 32 page full colour publication was published to coincide with In Conversation when it was first shown in 1997.
Funded by the Arts Council of England and edited by Bernhard Living, the publication outlines a number of site specific works by Susan Collins and includes a text by Helen Sloan.
For further information about this catalogue, please contact Bernhard Living on: b@bn1.co.uk.

Technical information:
To view the site you need to be running Internet Explorer 4.0,  Netscape 3.0 or higher (the site has been optimised for Netscape), and have Java enabled.
To be able to receive the video stream you will require the basic (free) version of the RealPlayer software and plug-in.
Please clear your disk cache regularly on entering the site in order to receive updated pages.


Susan Collins  ( brief biographical summary)
Susan Collins studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Fulbright award). She works across disciplines, and has been the recipient of a number of grants and awards for projects ranging from computer imaging and animation, to interactive, internet and site specific installation, including an Arts Council of England/Channel 4 Hi Tech fund award; a european artists residency (pepiniere) to Köln, Germany.
Public, site-specific installation works include: a sensor-controlled sound and video installation for the Woolwich Foot Tunnel in London; an interactive audio and robotic installation for the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester; video projected Litter onto the streets of Liverpool and Pedestrian Gestures, an interactive audio/video intervention for Hull, Manchester and Nottingham train stations.
Gallery exhibitions include installations in the Landesmuseum in Linz, Austria as part of "Objekt:Video"; "Triplicate", Tate Gallery St Ives, Southampton City Art Gallery, and Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; "Ex Machina", Zone Gallery, Newcastle; and a solo touring show, "Suspect Devices" at the Laing Gallery, Newcastle and Lux Gallery, London.
Online work includes 'Tumblong', a collaborative internet based cultural exchange project between the UK and Australia; 'In Conversation', a www/street/gallery public intervention shown in Brighton , Amsterdam, Helsinki, and Cardiff ; and  "Cruisin'" a chatspace commissioned by e-2 for Containership.
Work in development includes projects with Da2 (The Digital Arts Development Agency); Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance; and c/PLEX, West Midlands.
Collins is Head of Electronic Media and Head of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and is completing a PhD on 'the role of the viewer in the realisation of the work'.
[further biographical information including documentation of works is available at http://www.susan-collins.net]