Nothing Happens is a telematic networked performance in which online viewers work together to make a series of objects tip over. The performance consists of three acts, which are centered around staged environments – a high shelf, a cluttered tabletop and an empty floor. Each scene contains a central protagonist, respectively: a cardboard box, a clear pint glass full of water and a wooden chair. In all three acts, web-enabled, physical devices controlled by viewer’s clicks make these objects tip over. The three acts are performed sequentially, each within a duration of a few days’ to weeks’ time. These performance are linear and terminal; they end when the object falls.

The website acts as a go between, allowing physically distant observers a chance to participate. In one direction, the site displays live images in realtime of the current act as it unfolds. In the other direction, users are able to click a simple interface in order to manipulate the scene.

The key aim of interactivity in this performance is to create an immediate understandable form of interaction, so that each click of a user is rightfully perceived as progressing the scene further.

Hardware and installation: Rich Miller; software: Zach Lieberman, John Schimmel.
Nothing Happens is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Greenwall Foundation.
Additional support from 3rd Ward and ITP/NYU.