Goal: to make it possible to experience the presence of video through viewer’s direct physical participation in creating audio-visual material. The opportunity to be a part of a formal experiment involving connecting the body to a device and launching a video stream through one’s own movement (running).
The main element is a device inspired by the “tripod” that I constructed in 1993 in Bremen, which was used to record video work and make a performance titled Runner. This time, I invite my viewers to connect themselves to the steel arm and launch the audio-visual process with their own running character in the centre of the frame. The 2.1 version uses the latest achievements of video analysis and transmission, similar to that offered by modern technology in smartphones.
Placed on the arm of the device is a phone with a custom-programmed Instagram effect. It modifies in real time the images from the smartphone camera, recognizes the human figure, stretches the horizontal pixels placed along the edges of the silhouette and creates a virtual setting in which the performer is moving. The image from the phone is transmitted on four screens standing around the “tripod”. By moving around the circle, the spectator generates their audio-visual content: video, ideally synchronised sound and choreography of their dynamics in the real and virtual space.
The recorded materials from performances will be used to create a video work where all runners meet together in a cyber circle.
Piotr Wyrzykowski
Born in 1968 in Gdańsk. Artist, performer, scenographer. He received his diploma in Professor Witosław Czerwonka’s “PI” Intermedia Studio in the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, where he currently works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Painting. He creates mobile applications, video, multimedia performances, interactive installations, internet projects, activities in public spaces. He debuted as a performer in 1990 (Galeria Wyspa), co-creating with Marek Rogulski a duo called Ziemia Mindel – Würm. In the 1990’s, he was an active participant of the Gdańsk artistic environment, engaging in activities of co-creating the New Gdańsk School (Nowa Szkoła Gdańska). He was a member of the Association of Social Activity which run the C-14 Gallery, co-created the Otwarte Atelier Foundation (now: Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art) and was the vice-president of the Wyspa Progress Foundation. His current pursuit of using the modern technology to create global participatory performances is a development from his individual performances in the 1990’s. He is the co-creator and artistic director of the C.U.K.T. group (Central Office for Technical Culture), pioneers in using the Internet for artistic purposes (Wiktoria Cukt’s Presidential Campaign, 2001). He is the author of a pioneering Polish Internet work (44, 1999), based on Jan Matejko’s gallery of the kings of Poland. Wyrzykowski’s Beta Nassau (1993) is a part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His works are also in the collections and archives of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Museum of Art in Łódź, New Art Museum NOMUS in Gdańsk, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art and in a private collection of Pinchuk Art Centre in Kyiv.