Soundscapes

Friday 15th November 1996
20.00 - 21.30
Telematics performance hosted simultaneously in the Wards Building Basement, Waygood Gallery, Newcastle and ISIS Gallery, Melmerby, Cumbria.
Shown in conjunction with the conference/event 'Digital Dreams 4: Across 2 Cultures’.

Soundscapes was a 90-minute telematics performance event hosted simultaneously in two galleries located 80 miles apart, one in Newcastle upon Tyne the other in Cumbria. The two performance venues were linked by a digital ISDN line connection, enabling two female soprano singers to sing live operatic fragments, in duet with each other through the ISDN connection. A live life-sized digital video image of each singer was projected alongside her singing partner during the performance via Digital Video Conferencing technology.

The live digital performance sought to extend ideas concerning public and private spaces through the passion of the live female voice, starting from physical geographical sites and extending into the architecture of digital virtual sites.

Starting from physical geographic sites the performance extended into the architecture of virtual sites, where the precise meeting point of the performance took place.
The performance drew a conceptual and virtual line between the geographic locations of the two sites across the 'throat' of the country, echoing the historical line of the fortified boundary of Hadrian’s Wall.

This two-venue performance functioned as a simultaneous durational event viewers could enter into and leave at any time.

Soundscapes was made in collaboration with Wendy Kirkup