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David Blair
David Blair is a pioneering artist of the small screen. His evolving project WaxWeb
links the young medium of CD-ROM with the mature art form of experimental film.
Rather than virtual reality, Blair’s innovation is focused on story-telling.
His intriguing narratives circumscribe a mysterious link between technology and
spiritualism.
David Blair has worked since the late 1970s as an ‘electronic cinema
director’. He began work on his first feature WAX in 1985. It was completed in
1991 as a co-production with ZDF Television. The film version was distributed
through US, Japan, Australia and the UK. In 1992, Blair was awarded the Grand
Prize in the 6th International Video Festival in Montbeliard, France
Since 1994, Blair has experimented with the Internet as a medium for the
distribution of cinema. The New York Times declared the multicast of WAX
over the Mbone a ‘historic first’. This was followed by a networked version
of WAXWEB, which was available in four languages across the World Wide Web. In
May 1999, Blair completed the final version of this product, which he released
on both CD-ROM and the Internet.
He is currently working on his second feature, ‘The Telepathic Motion
Picture of THE LOST TRIBES’. Blair began work on this in 1991, and expects to
finish in 2000. The project has been supported with two grants from the US-NEA,
a commission from Holland House (part of Culture Capital Europe 96), and a
special funding from the Japanese Ministry of Education and the University of
Tokyo. He has so far produced two trailers and three prototypes of the Internet
version.
David Blair currently lives in Paris.
Prophet’s new work, Internal Organs of a Cyborg, takes a new
direction into storytelling that is a hybrid of interactive and comic book. It
continues Prophet’s interest in the plight of artificial creatures.
Jane Prophet is currently a lecturer in Fine Art at the Slade School of Art.
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Jane Prophet
In her career as a multimedia artist, Jane Prophet has extended the
boundaries of interactive narrative into new forms of participatory
storytelling. Working with both video and digital media, Prophet has established
ground-breaking formats for ‘hive’ intelligence.
After graduating from Sheffield Hallam University in 1987, where she studied
Fine Art, Prophet went on to complete an MA in Electronic Graphics at Coventry
University. Her interest in digital systems and artists’ use of computer
imaging became the focus of a PhD at Warwick University. She has recently taught
at University of California, LA.
Her project Swarm offered visitors an immersive entry into crowd
consciousness. Using the metaphor of bees, Prophet designed innovative graphic
worlds for hordes of pixels. Visitors contributed stories to a ‘hive’ that
still exists online. TechnoSphere extended this paradigm with a simulated
environment where visitors could sponsor virtual creatures. News of progress of
these creatures, including health and reproduction, was regularly transmitted to
‘screen’ parents. TechnoSphere has now evolved into 3D video.
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