An interactive multimedia presentation, booklet, and DVD, exploring dynamic interconnections between technology, nature and culture.

Imagine yourself submerged in a world of sound: harmonic tones, drones and ambient textures. You are surrounded by visions of nebulae, flowing water, waves, and soft edges. This is the primordial birthplace. Screens all around you show projection beams and geometric shapes. Loops of audio and video intersect with moving text. You glance at a page that has been given to you, outlining the content and structure of the presentation. You have been given a pen and instructed to write down or draw out any thoughts and ideas that may occur over the course of the event. A voice begins to speak....

Our current cultural landscape is immersed in heavily mediated information streams. From television to magazines, embedded advertising to the internet, we are constantly inundated with a ceaseless flow of data. The reality of the global village is becoming ever more prevalent while the planetary ecosystem deteriorates. How do we navigate our way through this fragmented hyper-reality and emerge prepared to create a sustainable future amidst an increasingly unstable paradigm?

At the crossroads of nature and technology, Crystal and Spore introduces a multimedia project entitled 'GAIALOGUES: In:forming a Future Culture'. Designed to explore the collective sense of place in our age of information, this inter-arts collaboration has three main facets:

1 - creation of a live multimedia presentation open to the public;
2 - creation of a DVD featuring audio and visual (slide and video) material;
3 - creation of a 64-page, graphically designed booklet.

Focusing on themes of globalization, ecological awareness, sustainability, media education, identity and cultural development, the Crystal and Spore collective utilizes advanced audio/visual techniques to create an all-encompassing multimedia environment. Original slide and video projections, custom-composed soundtracks, and spoken word elements merge with an aim to educate, inspire, and highlight the diversity of artistic expression. The fusion of varied artistic forms with digital media becomes a holistic installation that both informs and entertains, sparking relevant discussion concerning the nature of self, community and culture.

Quadraphonic sound and four simultaneous projections on sculpted screens set the stage for the immersive live presentation. Audience participation is mediated through an interactivity-oriented worksheet given to all in attendance. This introduces another form of media to the system, opening a dialogical channel and blurring the lines between audience and participant. As each information stream reveals and interacts with other components of the presentation, this whole-system environment develops the concept of the new media classroom. By submerging the audience in an open-ended, synaesthetic, semiotic experience of creativity in action, the result is an artistic continuum: instead of static paintings on gallery walls, paintings come alive as they are overlaid with images of plants and galaxies, geometries and patterns – all spliced and cut to create collages of embedded meaning.

‘GAIALOGUES’ primarily explores concepts within, and connections between, technology, ecology, language, art and design. The context is a collaborative process, while the resulting content is interdisciplinary: fusing text and spoken word with graphic and digital art, music and sound design, photography, video, and animation. All streams of content are integrated in a coherent media ecology. The textual component simultaneously reflects and is informed by the digitally-produced music and imagery; the spoken word element is a hybrid form of essay and poetics intended to advance vocabulary and encourage audience participation in a transformative neo-linguistic system. Overall, this unique multi-level approach allows for artistic and non-artistic disciplines to influence and be influenced by each other, exposing a vast cross-section of artistic interactivity.

The live presentation is an extension of the DVD production process. A complete audio and visual experience, the DVD will incorporate spoken word content with sound design and original music, while featuring innovative interfaces and interactive design elements. It will act as the basis for the visual element of the presentation, but will be layered with other video streams, slides and effects during each showing. In the production phase of this project, we intend to hire two professional video artists – Anson Vogt and Ryan Kurylo – to teach workshops on digital video editing, encoding and animation, and to assist in the making of the DVD.

We also propose to create a graphically designed, 64-page full-colour booklet that will elucidate and expand upon the content of both presentation and DVD. This booklet will resemble Crystal and Spore’s previous published works, including art, essays and poetry, as well as a community resource guide. While the presentation is both art installation and media classroom, the DVD and booklet package serve as cultural artifact, educational tool and promotional material. Reflecting the presentation while extending beyond it, the DVD and media pack effectively enable the ideas and art to reach beyond the live show and enter the greater cultural matrix of everyday life.

Exploring the implications of media saturation in a saturated media environment requires a delicate understanding of the paradox of the endeavour. Following from Marshall McLuhan's assertion that the medium is the message, Crystal and Spore attempts to convey relevant messages by making the media itself a message: the process models the content. 'GAIALOGUES: In:forming a Future Culture' exposes the audience to a convergent set of memes in a context of artistic expression and cultural creation. This process aims to foster a sense of aesthetic resonance with the ideas themselves, and to develop a continuing sense of inspiration for participants to create and shape their own cultural landscape through a variety of media pathways. Employing high-end artistic technologies to deliver a do-it-yourself message, the presentation thereby affirms the value of art as a transformational tool for raising awareness and evolving communication. Participants are expected to come away with a heightened sense of how to apply the content and ideas of this project in the context of their daily lives.

Offering tools and skill sets for understanding and engaging media in a way that empowers us all as cultural creators, Crystal and Spore aims to strengthen our ability to make informed and intelligent choices. The ultimate goal is not to provide answers, but to present new possibilities.