[the perpetual bed]

Video

[the perpetual bed]

Software, online
1998

[the perpetual bed] is an online world that emulates my 91 year old grandmother’s experience during a hospitalization where she floated in and out of consciousness and coherence. The environment allows the participant to explore boundaries between the real world and a dreamlike state using animated photographs of people and places from my grandmothers life. Users can interact with each other from within a navigable, surrealistic narrative situated in the world of my grandmother’s dream-state. A hybrid between video, interactive art, installation, and animation, the game relies on the movement of the user to encounter experiences with transparent yet tangible beings, memories, and places engaged with when seeing space in alternate patterns.

[the perpetual bed] tells a story in an altogether different way — by allowing the participant to move through a story, to “happen” upon a scene, and to find his or her own meaning in this ever-enacted place. In this way, it is as though film fragments were taken from the cutting-room and suspended in space with a particular organizational logic.

Created using VRML coding, an early internet format for creating 3D objects and worlds online with which multiple viewers can directly interact across a range of networks, the project was well received in the interactive media/digital art/performance arena. A custom VRML browser was built to facilitate real-time performances where participants around the globe could leave artifacts, texts, and interact with others. Thus, participants in these performances can then leave their mark and become part of the story– through hints, impressions, dialogue –for the next viewer. This residue becomes part of the world, ready for the next participant to discover.

Exhibitions (often as live performance)

  • Online feature at the “Third Bed” innovative arts and literature journal, curated by Paul McRandle, 2001
  • “Stuttgart Filmwinter” Special 3D exhibition, Stuttgart, Germany, January 21 2001
  • ACM SIGGRAPH 2000 Art Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana, July 2000
  • 6th Annual Computer Arts Festival, Maribor, Slovenia, May 21-27 2000
  • Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, February 2000
  • VRML-ART 2000, VRML-Art Website (http://www.vrml-art.org), February 2000
  • VRML-ART 2000, Web3D/VRML Symposium, Monterey, California, February 21-24 2000
  • STUNNED ArtZine, Dublin, Ireland, November 1999 – February 2000
  • UCR/California Museum of Photography, Riverside, California, November 1999 – February 2000
  • Exploring Cyber Society Conference, University of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK, July 1999
  • Alterites: Interdisciplinarite + Pratiques “Feminines” de l’espace Conference, Ecole d’Architecture Paris-Villemin, Paris, France, June 1999
  • Third Annual UCCB Storytelling Symposium”, University College Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, May 1999
  • Theorizing Performativity Conference, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, March 1999
  • Digital Arts and Culture Conference, University of Bergen, Norway, November 1998
  • State of the Arts: Production, Reception + Teaching in a Digital Age, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, October 1998

Collections

  • Third Bed Journal, 1999