The Finalists


'Anette Schäfer Anette Schäfer / 'Miles Chalcraft Miles Chalcraft / 'Gob Squad Gob Squad

“The Finalists” is the winning entry in an internationally-staged competition seeking ideas for Web-scene projects. The competition was sponsored by the Theaterfestival Spielart in cooperation with the Medienforum München and the Ars Electronica Center, and especially targeted theater people and performance artists. The prerequisite for consideration was the concept’s connection with the medium Internet.

The sponsors’ involvement in this competition is attributable to their interest in concepts that dovetail two so seemingly incompatible branches of art as the Internet and the theater. Their commitment to making available know-how and infrastructure beyond the structures of the theater and to thereby allow them to impact theatrical techniques and, thus, content as well is designed to provide the incentive to conduct this experiment with a realistic basis—in addition to a financial one.

Log onto “the finalists” and witness a group of people as they work to create entirely new personalities through the creation of their own personal homepages. Each individual seemingly has an infinite choice of characteristics to build their new selves, with the ability to alter everything from their age and sex, to their lifestyles and friends. As they immerse themselves in the details of becoming new personalities, they begin to fixate on certain aspects of their lives, sliding into total obsession over apparently innocent things. Ultimately each character self-destructs in a series of final extreme acts which attempt to fulfil their bizarre fixations.

On first visiting “the finalists”, users will come across a gallery of individuals, a schedule of forthcoming events and details of recent updates. Click on a portrait and you will be sent to that individual’s homepage, where you will be able to trace each individual’s progress in building their personality. Here it becomes clear that seemingly anything is possible, as each individual steals and samples material from other peoples homepages, websites and media, encouraging the user to explore other links (which may either be authentic or falsely fabricated by Gob Squad).

On a regular basis during the Spielart festival, the finalist characters will meet on a chat page, where alongside audience users they will attempt to both stay in character as well as derive suggestions on other characteristics they may wish to add to their profile, giving the audience the ability to have an influence on who they are. The finalist may also set up email accounts giving audiences the possibility of one-to-one contact. Other interactivity will be possible via a “noticeboard.”

As each character forms they may decide to set up live webcams or produce video footage of their character involved in daily tasks. Over the period of the festival, the characters will develop fixations which will ultimately lead to a form of self-destruction. So in its entirety the audience user will have witnessed the creation and bizarre destruction of a fictional character.