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While the visual arts thrive on spontaneity and often foreground the creative process, theatre more often functions in an environment of controlled focus, extensive fine-tuning, and eventually a sense of transparent continuity. The challenge confronting the organisers of Pseudo, the opening event of Brisbane's 1995 Fringe Festival was to successfully balance an obvious creative process with a degree of transparent continuity.
Billed as a "tedium free multimedia, 'interactive', performance, art, video event", Pseudo presented collaborative performance and offered some fascinating glimpses into the use of interactive multimedia as an artist's tool.
Occupying the centre of the theatre was Pseudo's "nerve centre", a four-metre scaffold carrying video projectors, banks of video recorders, computer monitors, cameras, and communication equipment. Around the theatre space hung six projection screens. However, the dominant (virtual) object of attention was a huge two-metre disembodied head suspended high in the theatre space, the sculptural work of Craig Walsh and Jeremy Hynes. Onto The Head was projected the face of Dave Parry, the evening's MC and virtual compare. Parry ("Zardoc") strapped to a seat in the control tower so the video projection image could be aligned, guided the audience through the night's performances.
Keith Armstrong and John Tonkin offered the main "interactive" highlights. Although their individual performances were very different in concept and presentation, they harnessed similar technologies. Both employed a Mandala system, a complex array of "real-time" video projections layered over computer-generated animations with embedded switches capable of being triggered by the performer. Keith Armstrong, Pseudo's coordinator and its driving force, performed Uncertain Circle, combining virtual performance with live interaction. Using the Mandala, Armstrong explored the notion of the virtual self, the interactivity of humanity and technology, and