“Life moves pretty fast, you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
F.Bueller (1986)
The 404th Wall
http://404th.com
“Do you hate it in old movies when drivers don’t watch the roads?
Do you stay awake at night thinking, “Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?”
Were your teachers concerned that you could potentially ‘daydream your life away’?
What brings us closer potentially tears us apart. This is the underlying theme of The 404th Wall, an experimental springboard of new platforms for participatory and new media practices.”
Hosted by The NewBridge Project, The 404th Wall is a satellite project of the 20th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEADubai). Referencing both Denis Diderot’s term “breaking the fourth wall” in which the boundary between audience and performer is removed, and the dreaded 404 Internet Error Code, The 404th Wall presented a series of daily live-streamed events between Newcastle and Dubai in an evolving participatory installation. From Google Hangout Tea Parties, to commissioned new media pieces made visible only when the Internet connection drops, The 404th Wall investigates our changing modes of communication as our interdependence with our screens increases.
Drawing inspiration from Calvino’s Invisible Cities, we are working with reality testers to explore and map the uncharted territory that exists beyond the 404th wall. Using experimental approaches with both fictional and real scenarios, we are investigating and designing new methods of para-extra-interdimensional cartography.
With your crucial support and dynamic navigational skills, together we will explore questions such as: How do we understand a place that doesn’t exist? How do we communicate across the physical and digital divides? How do we form personal and cultural emblems to represent places that are new to us?
If you feel you have the right stuff, drop in, or sign up to become one of our Extra Dimensional Explorers.
Safety not guaranteed. We have done this only once before.
*[NB: The NewBridge Project Space is closed Sunday 2nd November and Monday 3rd November]
Photo Credits: Colin Davison http://www.rosellastudios.com/
