This work incorporates a number of concerns explored in my practice in 2005. I had looked at the notion of the TV and the information being fed us via the TV as a prosthesis and or crutch for our way of thinking.

I was also looking at the way this information was being fed and Implicit in the process of the televisual mediums is the manipulation of the information being collected and presented via (techniques such as) framing, compositing, (choice of) subject matter, sequencing etc.

This reconstruction of information is recognised by us all and then somehow forgotten. It is as if a mass amnesia is continuously taking place. We forget that we are looking at sets, or that our (physical and informational) viewpoint is being controlled by the direction the camera is pointed in.

The information supplied is focussed and limited. (It is all too easy for us to digest) The sound bites and realities presented via these mediums become our views and opinions of the world around us.

Alongside this is the notion of the continuous now. Whereby because the images are coming at us so fast and continually we don’t absorb the information in front of us and discard it to allow space for the new set of information coming through

In my project ‘Livefeed’ I set out to explore these ideas through exposing the mechanics of the medium as I had with looping earlier in the year

In Livefeed I have used an amalgamation of apparatus associated with the TV medium and have constructed my own ‘Frankensteinian’ being.

However I didn’t want the dolly controlled or manipulated by anyone other than the viewer or viewers in the space.

I also wanted to give the dolly an anthropomorphic or human quality so the viewer could identify with it more. The movement alone achieves this. (And extension of Final Gag stands)

To do this I engaged the skill of a fellow student Kane Henderson from the engineering school at AUT. The engineering design he created in this project went towards a paper in his degree.

One of my underlying interests in installation is the manipulation or movement of the viewer within the entire space.

Much like the information I mentioned earlier discarded and unprocessed unless we take time to sift through the images on floor. Making way for the next information coming through on the screen.

The viewer becomes complicit in the making of this work, a mirror to their participation in mass media culture. They unintentionally become actors in this unscripted filming. As they move through the exhibition space they attract the attention of the nomadic dolly and it moves towards them. The viewer becomes the focus of the cameras eye and segments of their body are recorded, screened and printed.

The only manipulation of the video footage and photographic stills are those that are created through the restrictions of the machine and camera settings. Excluded are all human intervention and post-production procedures that you get through mass media productions

The recording and presenting of the viewers body is taking place in real-time and is devoid of the artificiality of controlled photography thus becoming a document of real and unaltered interaction. The images presented look different, crude and the manipulation inherent in information delivery in these mediums is acknowledged by its absence

Initially when embarking on this project I expected the crudeness of the detritus images to be harsh and undesirable however, to my delight they have an unexpected gentle and fragile quality to them.

As expected very different to the polished mediated TV imagery but surprisingly still desirable.