A Choreographer's Cartography

A Choreographer's Cartography is a multimedia work commissioned by Phoenix Arts as part of their 'Moving' project. It is a collaboration between Sean Clark and Raman Mundair and takes the form of an interactive installation that can be explored by one or more participants. The work was first exhibited at Leicester's City Gallery from the 26th July 2005 for two weeks.

The piece is installed in a room with controlled light and sound. At the centre of the work is Raman's poem 'A Cartographer's Cartography' which is read by three voices of different origin. As the viewers of the work move around the interactive space the voices come in and out of 'focus' according to the viewers' position. Sounds of journeys through a city and through nature can be heard from different directions via the surround-sound speaker system. On a large screen at the front of the installation video images from both journeys appear and the viewer discovers that their body movements are able control the mix of these images.

The work uses video-camera motion tracking to respond to the viewer in an intuitive and non-encumbered way. It runs on a small 'Mac mini' computer which is wired in to a good-quality video projector and surround-sound speaker system. It was programmed using Max/MSP/Jitter.