Hauntings

Abstract

Hauntings (http://johnt.org/hauntings/) is a portrait of Australian artist/writer Francesca da Rimini. Francesca was a founding member of cyberfeminist collective VNS Matrix. Hauntings uses mixed reality technologies to create a series of portraits of Francesca reading her writing. Her stories are autobiographical and explore cultural diaspora and cross-generational family histories. They act as spells and incantations and often draw from algorithmic writing techniques. These mixed reality (XR) encounters seek to recreate and reinterpret the experience of da Rimini's performances and readings. Each reading/performance is constructed as a kind of virtual sculpture that the audience can explore and interact with. These virtual spaces and the writing itself both share a deliberate tension between wanting to make sense of one's place in the world and the acceptance of fragmentation, of the breaking down of meaning and of the image. They seek to call forth more diverse perspectives on reality. The interactive experiences are influenced by Tonkin's on-going explorations into embodied perception and the relationship between the movements of a viewer and the active bringing forth of a world.