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book + dvd - Australasian CRC for Interaction Design - ISBN 0977597806
This a luxurious documentation of the project "Intimate Transactions", a complex interactive installation by the Transmute Collective based in Australia. In the work, affections and emotions are tentatively implemented through a different from usual interface: sound actuators and a custom mechanism to interpret the movements of the back and the feet (instead of the usual hands and keyboard). The communication with a remote person is then managed through this interface and a series of symbols with different relationships. The other person is never seen or heard, but it's doubtless perceived. Furthermore, the collaboration with the other person is necessary to maintain some equilibrium in the artificial world, and avoiding the chaos. The opaque glass-like silhouette representing users is well chosen to represent this (author's defined) "selfhood ecology." The enhanced multidisciplinary approach and the involvement of a different professionals, seem to have been essential to explore a performative perception of self that is different from the identity. Beyond the importance of producing good documentation for new media artworks, that is effectively produced here, the shared development was able to achieve a structured and abstract system that plays effectively with what Dr. Liz Baker calls "ecological subjectivity".