Toni Dove
Toni Dove has been producing unique and highly imaginative embodied hybrids of film, installation, and performance since the early 1990s.
In her works, performers and participants interact with an unfolding narrative, using interface and interactive technologies. Dove’s installations feature female characters from different eras who are subjected to the economic and technological determinants of their time.
Dove had previously co-created Archaeology of a Mother Tongue (1993) – a “virtual reality murder mystery” – with Michael McKenzie, which is now recognised as one of the first examples of narrative-led Virtual Reality.
6. Video documentation of Artificial Changelings, 1998
Artifical Changelings was an interactive laser disk and sound installation that used motion sensing to track the location and movements of a viewer standing in front of a dimensional rear projection screen. This was a very early iteration of video motion sensing that is now very a familiar technology in contemporary computer game systems.
Each 30-minute show of Artificial Changelings had certain similarities, but many differences depended on the viewer’s navigation through the three ‘zones’ of the story (accessed by stepping on the floor pads) and their physical motion, which affected the character’s behaviour, the viewpoint of each scene and the century of the story.
