Text by CLOT Magazine
Chalkroom is a virtual reality installation by Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang in which the reader flies through an enormous structure made of words, drawings and stories. Once you enter, you are free to roam and fly. Words sail through the air as emails. They fall into dust. They form and reform. Finally, an artform where you can fly, just like in your dreams. Laurie Anderson.
The piece premiered on 4th October (until 25th October)at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA), Brighton, who are a producing partner for Brighton Digital Festival and have curated a season of digital art, gigs, installations and a day of critical reflection. It has been installed in a temporary space outside ACCA.
The viewer can attempt to take a solo flight in a virtual world while moving around an enormous structure of words, drawings and stories. Chalkroom has previously been shown at MASS MoCA (USA), the Venice International Film Festival and the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.
The programme also includes Max Cooper and Architecture Social Club presenting Aether, a digital installation that plays on our relationship to the forms, sounds and colours all around us. Susan Ciani, Five-time Grammy award-nominated composer, electronic music pioneer, and neo-classical recording artist, one of the most renowned female composers in the world who will be sharing a double bill with Martin Messier and Gaika and Gazelle Twin.
ACCA will also host Brighton Digital Festival’s in-house conference: The Messy Edge. The conference, curated by BDF Director Laurence Hill, sits at the more human, less clinical and more interesting version of the ‘cutting edge’. It aims to unpack some of technology’s social, cultural and political implications and challenge dominant perspectives.
