Fuel for debate?

ReConstitution 2004 - Sosolimited from Sosolimited on Vimeo.

SOSOLIMITED ANNOUNCE “RECONSTITUTION 2008”

Reconstitution 2008 is a live audiovisual remix of the three presidential debates this fall. It is a nonpartisan hybrid of video art and performance that aims to expose the themes, content and structure behind the sound and images of the debates.

Sosolimited is John Rothenberg, Eric Gunther and Justin Manor; three MIT graduates as a performance and visual arts collective formed in 2003. They have performed and installed artwork internationally; both individually as artists in their own right and as a trio collective as Sosolimited. You can find their installations at the Foundation Cartier in Paris, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and Ars Electronica in Austria. Sosolimited can also add to their resumes, working with the likes of Cirque de Soleil, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, L’Oreal, and Honda.

For Reconstitution 2008, this unique trio of media artists has the technical ability and design genius to have created their very own custom audio and video software. The presidential debates is just an example of how they can cleverly showcase their skills to the masses, portraying the debates in a much more interesting, artistic and ascetically pleasing way to the viewer. By sampling a high profile event such as the live presidential debate, Sosolimited can extract the video, audio, and closed captioned text, and perform a series of visual and sonic transformations of these elements. Each argument and its rebuttal in the debate is analyzed and reassembled in a distinct way. In one example, they can examine the emotional content of the candidates’ word choice, in another they can track body language of the candidates and count the blinks of their eyes. The transformed visuals are projected onto a large screen for a seated audience, and the masters at work are positioned on a stage full of broadcast equipment below the screen.

Sosolimited originally performed Reconstitution in 2004 at the Art Interactive in Cambridge and at Bartos Theater in the MIT media lab. It was also performed with recorded footage of the debates at the Foundation Cartier in Paris in 2005. Sosolimited is preparing an entirely new suite of audiovisual treatments and analytical tools for the 2008 debates. The approach will be informed by work in linguistics, data visualization, and on the past four years of group’s performance experience.
So what does this mean for the future? You just may never get to see a broadcasted event in the conventional way again!

SOSOLIMITED: “RECONSTITUTION 2008” TOUR DATES
Sept 26th – Debate 1 of 3 – Institute of Contemporary Art, BOSTON
Oct 7th – Debate 2 of 3 – Art Directors Club, NEW YORK CITY
Oct 15th – Debate 3 of 3 – Corcoran Gallery, WASHINGTON DC

For more information on Reconstitution 2008, please visit www.reconstitution2008.com
For more information on Sosolimited, please visit www.sosolimited.com