A Digital Media Installation Tried to Pick Me Up – And Then Broke My Heart

Yep, there I was all alone in a dark room at Gallery Connexion on Friday night, couple of beers in me, feeling, you know, ooooookay, when I sensed movement behind. I froze in my ready stance (i.e., right hand firmly clasping beer because these things are almost always things trying to steal your beer), and turned around slowly. A very wired lady stepped out from behind a pole and said: “Hey Biffy. Lookin’ for some cyber action?” Geez, she read my mind and she was pretty in metal and circuitry.

I said, “Have I seen you around before? You look familiar.”
She said, “You’ve seen me in your dreams. I’m where we’re all going.”
I said, “Cool.”

Her name was Carnevale 3.0 and I knew right then that she was going to break my heart.

And she did.

A few minutes later, a man came in carrying a glass of wine and Carnevale 3.0 was all over him. Oh well … I still had my beer.

Feeling the pangs of unrequited being-hit-on-in-an-art-gallery-by-an-artificial-life-form blues, I wandered into the hall, where the proprietor of the gallery, Meredith Jane Snider, Carnevale 3.0’s mother, Reva Stone, and fellow BlackTop MotorCycle Gang member, Joe Blades looked down upon my sodden misery with much disdain.

Later, Reva gave an enlightening talk about Carnevale 3.0, about how she takes pictures of people, remembers them in a sort of nascent artificial consciousness way, and then superimposes them with previous memory/pictures and displays them on the wall in an ever-growing metaphor for memory.

I felt so used.

I talked to Reva – who is also Gallery Connexion’s art-in-residence – about Carnevale 3.0. Seems that, though she broke my heart, she’s a thought-provoking form of interactive experimental art. I was beginning to feel a little better about things because, after all, Carnevale 3.0 made me think.

In fact, I saw the gallery’s ceiling in a whole different light.

I asked it out, but had my heart broken again. Oh well, I’m thinking about approaching the NB Power installation around the corner just as soon as I get my nerve up.

And then I met musician extraordinaire Mireille Egan in the washroom. She was asking a water heater out on a date.

But in her case, the water heater said, “You bet, Mireille … just name the time and the place. (NOTE TO SELF: Switch aftershave brand.)

There was a big audience for the Reva’s presentation. And hey, there’s Whitefeather freshly back from Haystack with her son crashing in her lap.

In fact, there was a good-sized crowd …

Reva will appear again at Gallery Connexion (hidden comfortably behind the provincial court building on Queen Street) on July 18 to talk about art and artificial life. I’ll be there … new aftershave and all.