Installation:
A sofa is standing in front of a blue screen. The audience can sit in the sofa and watch them self blend into a new environment on a monitor in front of them. Instead of the blue background they see a wooden wall and all kinds of things happen around them. For instance a rainbow appears or they see a tail wiggle behind them and the sofa as they hear The Pink Panther theme played on a bad organ or someone stands up behind them
dimensions variable
The people in the sofa could see them selves in the monitor opposite them. Instead of the blue wall behind them they saw other things, such as the tail of the Pink Panther wiggling behind the sofa or a rainbow and such things. Using blue key chroma key technique they were filmed with the camera on top of the monitor and the image was manipulated with a videomixer
The Sofa
Reykjavik Art Museum 20.3 - 18.4 2004
nonTVTVstation is run by Stockholme based Splintermind in collaboration with a number of museums , mostly in the Nordic countries. The project took off in 1999 and since then nonTVTVstation has broadcasted real time art 24 hours a day. Everything that is transmitted through nonTVTVstation is created at the same moment as the viewer sees it. As long as the artist keeps to these frames, he or she is free to use what technology he or she wishes.
nonTVTVstation is spread trough the internet to four regional museums in Sweden, to Kiasma in Helsinki apart from the Reykjavik Art Museum. Apart from that, nonTVTVstation cooperates with SAT in Montreal, Eyebeam in New York, Museet For Samtidskunst in Roskilde, Furtherfield in London and EthicsTV in Venice. Due to a unique distribution technology the transmissions can be shown in large format in the museums and the quality is almost equal to that of TV
When nonTVTVstation starts a collaboration with Reykjavik Art Museum we of course want to present an Icelandic artists, Egill Sæbjörnsson, and transmit his work from Reykjavik.
At the museum Sæbjörnsson will put up a blue screen in front of which the audience is invited to sit down in a sofa. The blue background will in the transmission be exchanged to animations of Sæbjörnsson’s kind. Here it is possible to enter a stage to act in front of viewers at the museums connected to the nonTVTVstation and on the Splintermind website. The stage is however not all yours. You will act against the animated fantasy of Sæbjörnsson.
The set up reminds you of the kind of paintings you can find at markets and amusement parks where you put your head through a hole to have yourself photographed in a desert or at the beach or what is painted on the screen. It also similar to how portrait photographers worked in the 19th century when it was common to have a portrait in a built up milieu. The way of working with a blue screen is similar to works of early video pioneers such as Nam June Paik and others who used this technology to be able to perform in different surroundings in their videos.
This piece involves the action of the spectator and there is a social dimension that is central for Sæbjörnssons idea with The Sofa. The interaction with the audience and the Reykjavik Art Museum, is crucial for the creation of the piece.
