Toni Dove

Toni Dove is an artist and a independent producer who works with electronic media, including virtual reality, interactive video installations, performance and DVD ROM's. Her work has been presented in the United States, Europe and Canada as well as on radio and television. In 1998 she completed Artificial Changelings soundtrack by Swiss composer (Peter Scherer). Her project Spectropia is a feature length interactive movie for two players.

Spectropia is a  imaginative live-mix cinema event, a “scratchable” movie performed by video DJs playing a movie “instrument”. Toni Dove’s sci-fi hybrid, features time travel, telepathy, and elements of film noir in a drama set in England, 2099 and in New York City, 1931, following the Great Crash. Live performers orchestrate onscreen characters through an original mix of film, performance and a unique system of motion sensing that serves as a cinematic instrument, creating a narrative form that is part video game, part feature film, and part VJ mashing. The audience sees through characters’ eyes, hears their interior thoughts, and even talks with characters via Dove and her co-performer, R. Luke DuBois.

The story starts off in 2066. An archaeologist named Spectropia lives in a city where recreating the past in any form is forbidden. Every day, garbage piles up. Using a device that simulates the historical context of these artifacts and discarded objects, Spectropia travels back to New York, 1931. During the Depression, the capitalist structure strengthened its position through the indebtedness of the American people, with disastrous social consequences. A witness to the paradoxes of this dark era, Spectropia seeks to establish ties between the New York of the 1930s and the city she inhabits in the 21st century. This journey through time allows the character to adopt the point of view of a 1930s aristocrat and to live out her amorous passions by proxy. However, as soon as Spectropia tries to become intimate with a man from the 20th century, she is sent back to 2066. Thus, the conclusion of the story is undermined by the main character’s unfulfilled and unfulfillable desires.

Toni Dove sees Spectropia as a hybrid work combining a theatrical event with a video game for multiple players. Motion detectors and voice recognition devices activate the video segments and soundtrack. During public screenings of the film, two tutor-players control the console and simultaneously affect the parts of the story attributed to the characters from the 20th and 21st centuries. The installation consists of several levels of interaction since the audience is asked to join in. Participants are therefore able to converse with the characters, share in their private thoughts and enjoy a panoramic view of the action. The video images are projected onto several screens arranged in an arc in front of the audience.

During the production and postproduction stages of the project, Toni Dove has worked with several technical collaborators, including David Rokeby, Bob Carpenter and J. J. Gilford. David Zicarelli, the designer of MAX software, acted as a consultant. Julio Soto and Sebastian Bilbao of Black Logic looked after the computer-animated segments. Finally, Perry Hoberman has helped integrate the interactive components of the stage design of Spectropia.
Spectropia  is ones of Toni Dove famous film, that have brought people with emotions. Next I will show more pictures of this incredible film.

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