The ladder

The Ladder is a mixed-reality installation.
The room is plain apart from a window, cut high into the wall and a ladder. A tiny virtual character, that can only be seen through the computer screen, stands on a ladder and looks out of the window to the physical world. He keeps voicing concerns as to the nature of the world, tracing shapes with his hands and trying to describe the scene. The screen is on a rig so that you can pan it across the room but the boy stays at the top of the ladder.

The work exists at the faultlines opening between traditional notions of presence and place, blending spatial, generative and augmented elements, both virtual and real together into a work of contemporary art. The artists views the possibilites within augmented or mixed reality as a most important breakthrough in media art, allowing cinematic type installations to move from the 2D plane and inhabit the gallery. Through these strategies cinema can be recontextualised as an interactive and physical experience.

By John Gerrard, author of Watchful Portraits.
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