Intimate Transactions Prototype 2 - (6min11s) (Dir. Keith Armstrong)
Intimate Transactions Prototype 2 - (6min11s) (Dir. Keith Armstrong)
Intimate Transactions Prototype 2 - Guy Webster and Lisa O'Neill testing the work in two locations. (Video Keith Armstrong)
Intimate Transactions Prototype 2 - Guy Webster and Lisa O'Neill testing the work in two locations. (Video Keith Armstrong)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Participant Navigating on Mark II Wooden Bodyshelf. (Image Erika Fish)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Participant Navigating on Mark II Wooden Bodyshelf. (Image Erika Fish)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Mark II Propotype Bodyshelf, Artspace, Sydney, Australia. (Image Heidrun Lohr/Keith Armstrong)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Mark II Propotype Bodyshelf, Artspace, Sydney, Australia. (Image Heidrun Lohr/Keith Armstrong)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Show Poster. (Design Stuart Lawson)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Show Poster. (Design Stuart Lawson)
Intimate Transactions V2: 2004, Man and Shared Body Group (Photo Erika Fish)
Intimate Transactions V2: 2004, Man and Shared Body Group (Photo Erika Fish)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Woman Peers Into the Creatures' World (Photo Erika Fish)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Woman Peers Into the Creatures' World (Photo Erika Fish)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Mark II Propotype Bodyshelf, Artspace, Sydney (Image Heidrun Lohr/Keith Armstrong)
Intimate Transactions (v2): 2004, Mark II Propotype Bodyshelf, Artspace, Sydney (Image Heidrun Lohr/Keith Armstrong)

Intimate Transactions Stage 2 (2004)

Intimate Transactions was a research project developed in three distinct stages and outcomes between 2003 and 2005. Stage 2 was a radical departure from Stage 1 (2003) and was developed and presented during 2004. It cross-fertlised knowledges of performance and media arts in order to create a range of highly embodied interactive experiences for participants. Its outcome was a dual site interactive installation allowing two people to interact within a complex, generative, audiovisual environment by simply shifting their balance of bodyweight and backpressure. This involved the design of an entirely new tangible interface system which, via the use of back and feet pressure, allowed participants to control this server-driven, telepresent software work.

SHOWINGS:
1: ‘Headspace’ Residency Showings, 4–18 July, 2004, The Performance Space, Sydney, Australia. Curated by Fiona Winning. 
2: ACID Exhibits, October 2004, The Block, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, Brisbane, Australia. Curated by Professor Peter Lavery. 

WITH: Keith Armstrong Artistic Director (Transmute Collective), the Transmute Collective: Lisa O'Neill (Performance), Guy Webster (Sound), Zeljko Markov (Furniture/Interface), Stuart Lawson (3D), Marcos Caceres & Cameron Owen (Code), Ben Foley (Design).

 MORE: Intimate Transactions (Stage 2) developed a new interaction modality that focused upon active relationship building between two participants separated by distance but linked through network communications. Through a technologically mediated, avatar-based game play participants were able to conduct mutually beneficial  ‘Intimate Transactions’ – thereby establishing indirect, embodied dialogue both with each other and a range of computational creatures inhabiting their parallel virtual spaces.

This work engendered improved understandings of cultural and ecological co dependencies by allowing participants to understand the affects of their ‘action at a distance’, both upon each other and the creatures and virtual environments of which they were a part. By strongly promoting a shared sense of embodied sensation the work also hinted at the need for, and possibility of, personal and collective re-imaging in order to evolve a commonly beneficial environment.