Paradise tossed

Paradise Tossed (Stage one)
The installation uses Macromind Director's lingo to access a 12 minute animation on Sony Lazerdisc. It is displayed on a MacintoshFX with NuVista+ and Sony Lazerdisc Player and touch-sensitive Apple RGB screen.
The animation has been constructed in 16bit with Topas and Lumena software on two IBM Clone 486's and Photoshop on a MacintoshFX with with Vista Boards. A Diaquest 422 Animation Controller was used to output this to Sony BetacamSP.

"Paradise Tossed" (Stage 1) is an interactive animated survey of technological terrain, idealism and design from a women's point of view. Consequently, domestic technology is used as a metaphor for the history of human/machine interface and the viewer is presented with utopian elements of architectural design, science, advertising and transport from our Western history.

 
In the installation, participants can travel through and interact with four time zones 1900's (help) 1930's (hope) 1960's (growth) and 1990's (change). It is hoped that the interactivity will offer them some new information about the the changing nature of roles and workplaces; the connection between our physical dexterity and the development of machines and the relationship between idealism and design.

Jill Scott

Paradise Lost or Tossed?

Paradise Tossed, is a dreamy computer animated survey of techno-logical terrain, idealism and design from four young women's points of view. It uses Macro-mind Director's lingo to access sections of a twelve minute 3d animation on a Sony laserdisc player. The menus are layed out like pages from a photo album and by touching the screen the participant can not only choose segments to be played on another screen but can also construct timeless associations. Margaret Mead once said:

 
"Utopia is built on the great diversity of human propensity and gift and it must be in terms of modern information theory, redundant enough to catch the developed imagination of each different member of society"

 
This insight into the redundancy of the human condition was inspirational as a beginning point for research that led me to a series of archetypical assumptions. Carrying on from "Machinedreams " my last interactive work, I continued to research and compare eras, (1900's, 1930's 1960's and 1990's) conscious that although they exist a generation apart, together they encapsulate the tremendous extent of environmental and domestic change we have witnessed since the beginning of this century. It ocurred to me that interactivity could provide people with archetypical scenarios, that they would be curious to visit and in doing so may question the reason for their choices and why so many peoples ideals were similar. In Paradise Tossed participants can enter Dream-homes from the history of design which are marked with the caption "Step into the home of your dreams??" The four animations with architectural styles: Art Noveaux, Art Deco, Opp Art and Space Age, unfold accordingly. The choices are redundant enough to re-affirm utopian cliches, but I thought by putting them in the mosaic framework of the interactive design they can could all transpose time and stand together as current valid options of desire even today.

It is this "timelessess of desire" as emphasized by the title 'Paradise Tossed', I was aiming to present as an interactive playground. In fact, the heraldic pun of the title itself indicates "the tossing of desire", which part of the proverbial "salad" of idealism will the participant choose to "eat" next? Another section provides a set of choices within the technological terrain. Here, domestic technology is used as a metaphor for the history of the machine-human interface, and again the change and manipulation within the women's workplace becomes apparent as domestic appliances seductively present themselves over a landscape which flows with curves of the female body. A very typical advertisement slogan is used to re-affirm this, the viewer is asked "Just, step into the technology of Tomorrow",

 
At another point the viewer, can also "Flip through these Eyecatching Headlines" which gives them authentic pages displaying magazine headlines from each era . Another menu displays the caption , "Travel with us into Another World" and this allows the participant to witness transport on a boat, a train, a car and a plane respective of the shift in mobility development that took place over this century. The heraldic statements are intentionally seductive and reminiscent of the selling methods used to convince the average buyer . It was hoped, in Paradise Tossed, that the participant would see through the seduction. A key to this criticism is obvious in part of the attract loop of the Interactive: a set of women's hands hold a revolving globe of our blue world, "Where do we go from here? says the caption.

Paradise Tossed is a section of a larger interactive work which will encompass questing stories from eight women's lives, two from each era and four sets of archival photographs the participant can browse through.

Jill Scott