Output details

All the world's a screen

Sermon developed ‘All the World’s a Screen’ as a practice-based research project firmly rooted in the discourse on interactive arts, to confront new and emergent issues concerning ludic interfaces and open-digital systems. In their paper ‘Missing in Action: Agency and Meaning in Interactive Art’ (2011), Edward Shanken and Kristine Stiles argue that interactivity per se does not automatically produce works that offer a dynamic role or ‘agency’. In response, ‘All the World’s a Screen’ looks to role-play as a way of enhancing interaction between communities, by offering opportunities for people to experience their environment in different ways: encountering strangers, and allowing participants of all ages to play, create meaning and explore communication in order to cross cultural and linguistic boundaries.

This installation pushes the boundaries of telematic art and generative cinema by combining the possibilities of telepresent performance with miniature scale models and animated scenes. Through audience participation and interaction between Manchester and Barcelona, Sermon sought to interrogate the way impromptu narratives can be revealed and directed through the interplay between artist, audience and environment. This project referenced Shakespeare’s line ‘All the world’s a stage’, representing his ‘seven stages of man’ as seven rooms in a model film set, providing a metaphysical backdrop to steer the unfolding telematic plot.

‘All the Word’s a Screen’ was developed in collaboration with artist Charlotte Gould, who contributed three-dimensional animated environments and set designs, during a residency at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) Study Centre (2011). It was presented between MadLab Manchester and HANGAR Barcelona, and between the MACBA Study Centre and the Umbro Design Space, Manchester for the FutureEverything Festival (2011). These outcomes were later presented at ISEA Sydney (2013) and as a journal article in the ‘International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media’ (2013, 9.2, p.231ff).

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