PHYSICAL_CHAT

* indicates portfolio item.

PHYSICAL_CHAT_1 was a live performance commissioned by the Watershed Media Centre Bristol* and was a collaboration between Rauch and Dr Dew Harrison (then UWE/AHRC postdoctoral research fellow). Physical Chat was then proposed and accepted as a paper for the Biennale of Electronic Art, Perth, Australia (2002) as PHYSICAL_CHAT_2 and published in the conference research proceedings.*

PHYSICAL_CHAT was a digital performance activated as two events which explored new forms of communication and consciousness generated by models such as forums, rpgs and chatrooms. The first event took place at the Watershed Media Centre, Bristol and was an offline performance filmed as a contribution to the second event, which played out online across the globe as part of the Biennale of Electronic Art Perth, Australia.

The first performance was a real-space event with 8 participating artists involved in the weaving of two narratives (dream + realtake) into one representation of consciousness.

PHYSICAL_CHAT_2 concerned the nature of the online chat arena, the issues of identity and authorship involved in a pure text environment and the challenge of the semantically associated but fragmented dialogues and discourses, which were then interwoven and reconstructed through the process of time delays and differing mind states. Where Physical_Chat_1 focussed on physical intimacy, the later Physical_Chat_2 was played out live across the internet with total anonymity.

The ideas in the collaborative research were further explored in a joint paper HARRISON, D./RAUCH, B. 2006. A Merging of Mindsets Through Collision and Collusion In: Proceedings for Consciousness Reframed: Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era. 8th international research conference. Plymouth, July. (NYP) and in the publication in the journal published by The Planetary Collegium. Technoetic Arts, 2007 ed. Roy Ascott.*