INDIGESTION

Indigestion combines an interactive video with a virtual environment. The image of two dinner companions is projected onto a horizontal screen whose shape, size, and height precisely correspond to those of an actual dining table. The familiarity of the scene—although it is flattened into two dimensions—is critical to the sense of transgression the piece engenders. Stepping into the installation is like intruding upon a private conversation whose course you can redirect.

A touch screen offers the viewer a menu of stereotypical characters to choose from. The characters are of ambiguous relation to one another and are defined only by their voices, their accoutrements, and the gestures of their hands. The viewer activates the video by selecting two of the characters, a choice the viewer can change at any point throughout the virtual meal. Replacement then triggers a diversion within the narrative’s intricate branching structure. Each path deviation is preceded by one of 106 different animations that resets the table accordingly.

The dialogue is conceived to maintain narrative continuity in any branching pattern. While each new juxtaposition alters the event in line with a selected character, the content remains strikingly similar: in classic film noir fashion, the narrative always involves the deception of an unwitting victim by the femme fatale (although the characters’ genders are reversible).

The variable narrative structure of the interactive video simultaneously affects the progress of the nearby virtual environment. A participant using a motion-sensing device can navigate through the magnified computer-generated space of the dinner table. This virtual view is projected—in real time and in three dimensions—for an audience of viewers wearing stereoscopic 3-D glasses. The virtual image is split between two large screens positioned on opposite sides of the room like a car’s front and rear windshields. Moving forward on one screen creates the sense of moving away on the other.

This magnified viewpoint, in combination with the full range of motion on the table surface, offers several alternative narrative possibilities. A micro drama plays out in the details: a lipstick print on the rim of a man’s wineglass, a glimpse of a third character reflected in a woman’s silverware, a cryptic symbol written in the condensation of a man’s water glass. The table presents several streams of information that propel the narrative in different directions. An archetypal blackmail scenario, for example, is disguised as repartee about food. Using a point-and-click feature on the navigation device, the viewer can track each character’s level of sobriety, monitor caloric intake and cholesterol count, and examine spectrographic readings of the narcotic—a sedative secretly slipped into the victim’s drink—as it takes effect.

The interactive video and virtual environment each prioritize a different aspect of the event, but the two are not cumulative. Rather, they produce conflicting narratives that remain indigestible.