dLux media arts / Artspace in association with Realtime, Dept of Media + Communication, Macquarie University are delighted to present Desert Rain by Blast Theory in its Australian premiere at Artspace in November 2002.

A collaboration between artists' group Blast Theory and the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham, Desert Rain is an exciting and provocative work on the cutting edge of hybrid art practices. Defying easy definition Desert Rain is at once a collaborative Virtual Reality game environment, an interactive art installation and new media performance, skilfully combining virtual worlds, video, installation and live interaction.

"Six audience members at a time enter the environment and are instructed to find a target. Separated from each other in fabric cubicles, the players have to negotiate a virtual desert projected onto a rain curtain. Led through the spray and over a sand dune, the audience encounters on a television screen the person who has been their supposed target. Each such target has an association with the Gulf Wars."
John Wyver, Illuminations
Desert Rain Publication 2002

"The central artistic concern of Desert Rain is virtual warfare, the blurring of the boundaries between real and virtual events, especially with regard to the portrayal of warfare on television news, in Hollywood films and in computer games. Informed by Jean Baudrillard's assertion that the Gulf War did not actually take place because it was in fact a virtual event, both the content and the form of Desert Rain are designed to provoke participants to re-evaluate the boundaries between reality and fiction, and between the real and the virtual. As the players eventually discover, the targets they must find in the virtual world are six people who have quite different perspectives on the Gulf War."
Blast Theory
Desert Rain Publication 2002

what: interactive cyber game for 6 players at a time.
when: November _ Friday 15 through to the Friday 22nd_ every half an hour
where: at Artspace, 43 - 51 Cowper Wharf Rd, Woolloomooloo
cost: $11/6
bookings essential: the piece is structured as an interactive game for six players, we prefer bookings to made in groups of six. groups of six will get one ticket free - call 02 9380 4255, leave contact details

Blast Theory Skills Exchange Laboratory
The exhibition of DESERT RAIN in Sydney 2002 has also allowed six performers from across N.S.W the opportunity to participate in a skills exchange laboratory with the five members of Blast Theory who have taken up the artists' residency at Artspace. The six Australian performers (listed below), who were selected on the basis of their skills and experience in hybrid arts practice are now able to play an integral part in the installation and performance of Desert Rain in Sydney. The skills exchange lab is emerging as a dynamic environment for creative exchange where the Australian performers can engage and work intensively with Blast Theory, an international new media / performance arts company of the highest calibre.
Australian Performers and participants in Skills Exchange Laboratory :: Marion Conrow, Victoria Hunt, Stephen Klinder, Caitlin Newton-Broad, Victoria Spence, David Williams

Blast Theory Research and Development in Sydney
During their two-week residency at Artspace, Blast Theory will also be conducting research and development into their new work Can You See Me Now? A collaboration between Blast Theory, The Mixed Reality Lab and The Equator Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration; this work (in progress) is a game that happens simultaneously on the streets and online, using satellite tracking and hand held scanner technologies. dLux media arts is supporting this R&D and hopes to be able to premiere Can You See Me Now? in Australia at our next futureScreen 03: gamble event scheduled for late 2003.

Very Strange Weather
Ju Row Farr and Matt Adams from Blast Theory will also be giving a presentation at Very Strange Weather - a one day symposium on new media art and media ecologies that starts from the premise that 'the media-scape behaves somewhat like the weather'.