Allison Berkoy presents Company, an interactive multimedia experience of stories, games, and performances. Guests enter an installation environment suggesting a living room. They meet a life-sized figure protruding from a canvas, enlivened through video projection, with an invitation to stay. The figure makes requests of guests, discloses stories and secrets in absurd and sometimes uncomfortable progressions, and entertains.
[May 2-4] Allison Berkoy: Company
Allison Berkoy
Fri, May 2 2014, 7pm Reception
Sat-Sun, May 3-4, 3 to 7pm Installation
Admission: FREE
Location:
Harvestworks
596 Broadway, #602 | New York, NY 10012 | Phone: 212-431-1130
Subway: F/M/D/B Broadway/Lafayette, R Prince, 6 Bleeker
Allison Berkoy presents Company, an interactive multimedia experience of stories, games, and performances. Guests enter an installation environment suggesting a living room. They meet a life-sized figure protruding from a canvas, enlivened through video projection, with an invitation to stay. The figure makes requests of guests, discloses stories and secrets in absurd and sometimes uncomfortable progressions, and entertains.
Company creates an illusion of complex interaction through location-based triggers and a video bank of responses. The figure appears to test her visitors, reacting to guests’ decisions to obey or refuse requests. Her behavior changes more radically amid larger gatherings of company versus the company of lone potential-companions; with each get-together she adjusts her level of intimacy accordingly. Induced by guests’ actions, in combination with branching and randomized script pathways, each encounter with Company unravels divergently and indeterminately.
The first prototype of Company exhibited at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and received a grant for continued development from RPI’s Center for Cognition, Communication, and Culture.
BIO
Allison Berkoy is a New York based artist working in mixed-media installation, performance, and projection. Her hybrid spectacles have appeared inside galleries, music venues, theater stages, and less usual spaces such as a train caboose and salvaged lightship. Berkoy received an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and graduated from Northwestern University’s Theatre program. http://www.berkoy.com
