Hallwalls' annual two-day festival of new experimental films, videos, performances, web-based work, and sound art:

overview • on-line • installations • program 1 • program 2 • after-party

program 1:
8 & 9:30 PM, friday, January 27, 2006
@ Hallwalls, 341 Delaware Ave.

Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape, Sarah Bay-Cheng
HUMAN TRIALS (20 min. VR performance)
HUMAN TRIALS is a networked virtual reality (VR) drama and an environment for supported improvisation.Ê A participant is networked into the virtual environment with human actors who lead him/her through virtual locations, moral choices and emotional states. The story-scape is a surreal quest, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing: imagine TarkovskyÕs Stalker crossed with Alice in Wonderland crossed with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The participant also interacts with computer-controlled characters and smart sets. The participantÕs reactions are logged, interpreted psychologically, and affect the charactersÕ behavior, the presentation of further challenges, and the ending.

// SHORT INTERMISSION //

Liss Platt
LONG TIME COMING (4:35 min. video, 2005)
Long Time Coming is comprised entirely of remixed audio and video clips from the last period of the 2004 Stanley Cup Final (Calgary vs. Tampa Bay). What emerges is the sexualized nature of the dance-Ñwhere seductive glances give way to serious bump and grind, and a lifetime of longings are finally fulfilled. This is CanadaÕs national pastime as youÕve never seen it before.

Bill Brown & Thomas Comerford
CHICAGO DETROIT SPLIT (8 min. 16mm projection and performance, 2005)
Brown and Comerford find the common ground of shared street names in their respective cities, yet they employ the unslit 8mm format to juxtapose these like-named tracts of landÑthe juxtapositions allowing for chance encounters across time and space between these two midwestern cities. (featuring live accompaniment by Bill Brown and Carl Lee)

Virocode and Torsten Z. Burns
THE LAUGHING DEATH (15 min. video, 2006)
A mythic fable of political contamination told in a video context. The narrative proceeds through a linked series of reconstructed stories with social overtones.