(re)collector by James Coupe – produced in partnership with The Junction for Enter_Unknown Territories, Cambridge, UK, April 2007.

Julio Cortazar’s short story ‘Las babas del Diablo’ involves a photographer who witnesses a young man and a woman together in a park. It explores the way in which the camera selectively interprets reality. People become characters, places become locations, everyday objects become storytelling devices.

Standing outside the camera’s frame, observing the scene, we can directly compare reality with its image. If we step into the frame of the image, we transition from subject to object and become part of the story. To then see that image is to witness the only part of reality that we cannot experience first-hand: ourselves acting as an object in the world.

(re)collector is a public art installation that generates films by using
Cortazar’s story as a template. A network of cameras is installed around
the city, programmed to recognize ‘cinematic behaviors’ corresponding to
sequences in ‘Blow Up’, Antonioni’s film adaptation of Cortazar’s story.

Each day, computer vision software analyzes the captured footage from the cameras. The software then reorganizes it into a narrative sequence, based upon matches to lines from Cortazar’s original text. These films, generated according to the story’s logic, are then projected back into the city center.

As new footage is captured by the cameras, it replaces and juxtaposes the existing narrative sequences. The story mutates, becoming retold each day, altering the context of people’s actions. Gradually, people in the city began to modify their behavior in order to regain control of their image, blurring the boundaries between performance/reality, subject/object, observer/observed.

ENTER_UNKNOWN TERRITORIES is a five-day international festival and two-day conference of new technology arts, taking place throughout Cambridge from Wednesday 25TH to Sunday 29th April 2007. Its three main activities of public art events, workshops and conference, will address, explore, and question the possibilities of making and experiencing new technology arts. Following an international call for submissions three major commissions were chosen to highlight the festivals’ programme.

www.enternet.org.uk