Intimate Transactions

Just spent half an hour on the Intimate Transactions installation / interactive new media piece by the Transmute collective which involves my colleague Keith Armstrong. In this installation you lean back against what's called a body shelf - a slightly angled surface with pressure sensors that sense the motion of your body. You also stand on a movable foot board, and both of these are used to control your avatar on a video screen. At the moment, the installation here on the Creative Industries Precinct is networked with a duplicate of the system down at ACMI in Melbourne, and both 'players' are interacting with one another and the 'game' as they're controlling their avatars.

The gameplay is hard to describe - as a kind of ethereal body players float in a dark space, able to enter various mollusc-like creatures and (once inside) to pick up various goodies (images and sounds). As more things are picked up, the sound and vision becomes more intensive and immersive. The two players are also able to connect with one another and share the stuff they've collected - it felt a bit like exploring on your own and then comparing what you've found, and was quite rewarding somehow.

Like I said, hard to describe, and probably more fun to experience than to watch. It's on show in the Block on the CI Precinct (and at ACMI) for a little while longer yet (alongside some other very interesting video art works), so perhaps just check it out for yourself?