The Synergy Project (2007-09) is an interactive video installation that investigates the manner in which meaning is created when varying narrative elements are changed.  It consists of visual and aural phrases that can be chosen by visitors to create intuitive new relationships. The content of these phrases include nature/technology, culture/politics, absurdity/humor. Formal aspects of the clips allude to magic realism, ritual and abstraction.

This piece is immersive and poetic. The images are projected on a 27’ panoramic scrim that nearly surrounds the viewer.  They are lush, textured, quirky, and suggestive of ideas in the realm of nature/ technology, culture/ politics, magic realism and ritual. Some are images of significant actions by participants or props that the artist made for the project.

The sounds and landscapes were collected from diverse locations with an emphasis on the pacific coast that is part of the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California.  The sounds were remixed and added to by composer Brian Harnetty.  The result is part of the palette offered for visitors to explore their own narrative impulses in response to these subjects. 

Variations on narrative structure in the written and filmic world are broad and can include poetic rearrangements of time, parallel storylines, flashbacks, simultaneous fact and fiction threads, etc. Technological progress has also effected these variations, with options such as random access to data (enabling plot-lines to shift in computer-assisted games and projects) and immediate access to global information.  In addition, questions of authorship, originality, the intent of the writer and the point of view of the reader/ watcher are all important aspects of interpreting narratives. The Synergy Project allows the viewer/participant to affect some of these parameters. 

Claudia Esslinger, audio by Brian Harnetty