"Virtual Reality, artificial reality, dataspace or cyberspace are inscriptions of a desire whose principle symptom can be seen in the absence of community."

– Avital Ronell

Despite efforts of people like Nicholas Negroponte, we can still barely comprehend what the implications are of the ubiquitous computer media and what it means to 'be' digital. Even the existence of the (im)possibility of virtual communities is still being heatedly discussed in various camps. There can be no doubt, however, that the digital media have assimilated and influenced social and cultural processes. The question as to who we are and how we relate to others, to the (digital) world around us, to individual and collective identity and the processes that determine that relationship, needs constantly to be reassessed. It is precisely these questions that Chris Dodge considers in a metaphorical way in this interactive video. What remains of individual actions, and how can we observe, deconstruct and visualize in a digital environment, the origins of collective identity? He takes as his basis a number of parameters, individual versus collectivity, movement versus stasis, engagement versus passiveness. Assuming that we continually release fragments of our individuality into the digital network, and that these, for a longer or shorter time, are registered and transmitted before they are abandoned to the digital collectivity, he sees the digital network as the ideal platform for the deconstruction of this process. Although the technical realization is exceptionally complex, the set-up of the installation is essentially simple. In the space, a number of sequential zones have been set out which are recorded by cameras. The camera image of a passing visitor is, however, reduced to movement essentials of direction by the computer and processed to an abstract presence. This so-called 'optical flow field' determines how small pixels of the original image will react to the behaviour of the visitor. After a while, the syvoice has converted the stream of visitors into a collective power field that then determines how each subsequent visitor will be processed. Sound is processed in the same way. And so, each individual visitor contributes to a developing collective pattern which influences and remodels his actions. The passer-by has, whether he realizes it or not, an involuntary effect on this process. His presence, his actions drive the collective stream. Only by stopping abruptly, concentrating and 'holding on' to the image, can the viewer rediscover his individuality in the collective stream.

– Geert-Jan Strengholt