TRG - Transient Reality Generators

Transient reality generators – TRG, a word which in many Eastern and Central European languages means market, is very appropriate for the whole idea of the divided space.

TRG is a project of creating an interactive intelligent ambience, where the physical transcends into virtual. The participants are actively included in this artificially created world with movements, action and interaction.

Project was executed with the collaboration of three European Cultural Centres FoAM (Brussels), Time's Up (Linz) and MMC Kibla (Maribor). It was supported by European commission programme CULTURE 2000. It lasted from June 2004 till July 2005.

MMC Kibla hosted partners from Brussels in March 2005 and partners from Linz in April 2005.

The main focus of the project is a relatively new phenomenon called Mixed Reality- environments which include distinctive reciprocal actions or interactions of virtual and physical reality, both strongly intertwined- and the research of its implications in cultural spheres. MR enables the public to plunge into the multisensual, responsive media environments that are able to react and to develop themselves when influenced by human activity and interaction. The participants leave the role of the observers and slip into the role of temporary autonomous reality creators.

International team of artists and technologists researched the borders of this unique form of creative expression through integration of the self- sufficient media, material and structure systems which we comprehend as a distant sphere of reality, incorporated in physical objects and architecture. The project examines the potential expansion of visual arts into the sphere of sinaesthetic MR experience form where artistic works become all- embracing art worlds.

FoAM - in Kibla

Cleansing- desorientation- absorption- renewed pressure regulation

Foam, art group from Brussels, prepared an interactive setting in the space where every visitor was able to launch a sensory environment- sophisticated technology, hidden in the textile overcoat. The theory behind the TRG project is psychologists' Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson theory about the eight circles of consciousness. The passage to the 5th level is where we are fully aware that everything we do has an influence and is interactive. People in the Western society are on the 4th level distance from our bodies and each other. With motion, action and interaction in the TRG space, sound and picture change. The space senses are video cameras and extendible sensors. »The head« of the TRG project are computers and their software. And of course our group.

Project TRG production team are: Cocky Eek, Nik Gaffney, Lina Kusaite, Hans de Man, Julian Oliver, Steven Pickles in Theun Karelse. Sia Kiriakakos is a Greek performance artist who participated with FoAM on two previous projects. On TRG project she helped to relax visitors with foot reading after they soaked their feet in a jacuzzi.

We have invited the antropologist Magda Wesolkowska to the TRG project. She executed an etnographic research with four focus groups-children with cognitive disturbances, people over 60 years of age, mixed group and a group of artists.

We wanted to know how various groups respond, because TRG is a public experiment that we want to improve. The results of the experiment will be published in the project TRG book and presented on international conferences.

The opening of the exhibition took place on the 11th of March 2005 between 8pm and 0.00 in MMC Kibla. The ambience was opened to the public until the 20th of March 2005!

Video

Foam - video (QuickTime)

Photo gallery - Kibla, March 2005

time's up - in Kibla

Austrian- Australian group time's up (Linz, Austria) introduced the second part of the TRG project supported by European Commission and its Culture 2000 programme in MMC Kibla.

The opening took place on the 22nd of April 2005, at 8pm in MMC Kibla.

Austrian- Australian group Time's Up presented 'Cavity Resonator' , 'Lightning district' and 'Mood Swings' within the spheres of their new development project- Sensory Circus.

'Sensory Circus' is in many ways space dramaturgy. Parts introduced in Kibla are focused on swinging and grooving, on the playful nature of motion and action.
'Cavity Resonator' is a composition and an environment where visitors can personify Elvis and experience caraoke while steering a void space and shaping a way, sing in caraoke bar and do the hip-dance in Elvis style.
'Lightning district' is a space especially adapted for Kibla that modifies driking habits of the guests. The visitors create music with glasses and are in this way diverted from the standard behaviour. In a playful way they are confronted with hidden possibilities of drink consumption.
'Mood Swings' use the elements of circus environment that stimulate the visitor to move, roll, swing and run endlessly in the same place. Mood swings is run by an engine which is actually the nature of the whole space. Actions of the visitors are mirrored in acoustic, visual and light changes in environment. The devices which are based on the familiar objects from the playgrounds, are simple, intuitive and create numerous effects in audio- visual environment that surrounds them.