With the advent of online simulated experiences, a larger amount of human time is being spent participating in virtual environments where multiple users from around the globe interact. These virtual environments have become sites for significant cultural, economic and personal encounters based on telepresent interactions. This raises some significant questions for researchers and artists, for instance; how does technological embodiment change communication conventions and by consequence social interactions? How can the performance artist use these new forms of mediation? My project engages these questions by reversing the problem. In Avatar, social interactions that usually only happen in the virtual world are brought into the real. Avatar is a new media and performance-based work where multiple users are given complete control of their own performer via a wireless remote control device. Live performers are transformed into robotic puppets that respond to their user’s instructions and desires. If actors should be treated like cattle, as Hitchcock suggested, then Avatar provides the audience with the opportunity to do so. By remediating the avatar from a state of digital embodiment into a physical body, my project explores the tensions in mixed reality environments and interactions. In this hybrid environment, new codes of engagement must be learned through experimentation and experience.

Robert Lendrum (b. 1979) was raised between the suburbs of Toronto and the rural hamlet of Fallbrook, Ontario. An emerging artist working in video, performance and documentary, he received his BFA from the University of Western Ontario and his MA in Media Studies at Concordia University. Now completing his MFA at Ryerson University, he has exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax and Ann Arbor. For more information please visit his website at www.robertlendrum.com.

Opening Reception: June 11, 7 - 10 p.m
June 11-14

Lennox Contemporary
12 Ossington Ave.
www.lennoxcontemporary.com
(416) 924-7964

Elaine Brodie
Kenneth Chou
Erin Clarke
Christine Engel
Tori Foster
Ryan Gauvin
Jermaine Bagnall
Gail Hammer
Estelle Hebert
Randy Horton
Ernie Kestler
Stephanie Kloibhofer
Mark Laurie
Robert Lendrum
Heather Lidberg
Joanne Loton
Morris Lum
Lindsay Maynard
Sadia Mir
Zanele Muholi
Lyndall Musselman
Lara Rosenoff
Graham Runciman
Mike Sage
Melanie Saumure
Katherine Schneider
Mark Tollefson
Inger Whist
Marie Wustner