Kirk Anthony Woolford (USA), born 1967, studied Computer Science and Mathematics/Humanities at Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York; Photography, electronic imaging at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois. Performances and exhibitions in the USA and Europe since 1988.

In our mythology of science fiction, we have created a new level of existence called Cyberspace, Cyberpunk novels overflow with descriptions of characters crossing the boundaries of the physical and cyber world. Many of them scream out for a shedding of the flesh, a dying unto the physical world to allow them to live forever in the afterworld of Cyberspace. A physical body just slows you down in the matrix. "Aurora on the Line" does what cyberpunks fear most. It sticks a human body in the matrix's data stream.

Because digital data can't penetrate these bodies, it must flow around them, creating pockets of turbulence which spill out at their feet, and is mixed into the data carried over the lines. On the remote side of the Net, the turbulence appears as a shock front in the space, scrambling local data flow, and physically manifesting in a wind constantly blowing toward the other body.

Occasionally, one of the denizens of Cyberspace wanders over to find the source of the turbulence. "Aurora on the Line" asks what happens to the body when confronted by the Net by showing the Net as confronted with the body. The installation consists of two circles separated in physical space, but linked in a Cyberspace. Water continually flows around these circles just as data continually flows from one side of this space to the other. When a visitor steps into one of the circles, the presence of his or her body creates a barrier in the data space. The data cannot stop moving, and cannot be destroyed, so it changes direction, collides with other data, collides with the barriers, until it finishes its course to the other side of the space. This disturbance of symmetric flow generates turbulence. When the earth's electromagnetic field deflects the flow of the solar wind, the resulting turbulence creates phenomena known as geomagnetic storms and the Aurora Borealis - Northern Lights. More terrestrial turbulence is most often perceived by those of us with physical bodies as wind. When we step into the circles, auroras stream off our bodies and we become wind generators in the shared space. Because our laws of physics still bind computer programmers, "Aurora on the Line" can't carry a physical body over the Net to the remote circle, but the Net carries the resultant turbulence to the remote circle, creating both an aurora and a wind source in the remote location.

Technical Background

HW: Silicon Graphics
SW: Artists' Proprietary