VirtuAlice consists of Alice's wheeled throne, a monitor inside the gallery, and a monitor in the gallery's front window. Visitors drive around the gallery, and the direction of a telerobotic camera mounted on the throne is controlled by participants over the Web. VirtuAlice is a vehicle for a shared experience, whereby participants collaborate in transferring that experience into meaning, into history. By appropriating surveillance technology and interweaving surveillance streams, she raises questions about subjectivity and control. Barterama, too, was the first Website of its kind.
Human individuals create a world which simultaneously becomes a context for their own existence.
This dialog completes the meaning of the work. We delivered a paper by this title at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 1997. The Artists Nina Sobell is a pioneer video artist whose improvisational time-based sound and image Web performances are embedded with her drawing, sculpture and video background. She is inspired by the collaborative process that evolves from crossing the lines of music, art and technology, and opening up these channels interactively to the public, initially through interactive video installations, and more recently on the Web. Sobell is primarily interested in non-narrative work that leaves open the possibility for multiple interpretations.