Sunday 2 May 2010

The Devil's In The Detail










Emergent Behaviour's final project at Goldsmiths.

You (the audience) are escorted by a Vegas show girl down to the Deptford Old Police Station where you are told to write your address on an envelope and a memory personal to you. You are waiting to get into the club situated in one of the containers and a bouncer picks you one at a time to enter into the Casino. You enter alone into Level 5 of Casino Purgatorio where you meet Midas and Pygmalian your eternally grateful hosts. Here you are able to swap your memory for a gambling chip and are given the chance to gamble with a piece of yourself for potential loss or gain.

Chance dictates your future and therefore the next stage of the game. The outcome of the game of blackjack determines the next room you enter or does it? Your hosts guide you to one of two rooms and there you will embark upon the next stage of your solitary journey for 3 minutes. Are you a winner or a loser? Is there any such thing as heaven or hell? Will you always want what you can't have? Do your outlook on life affect your experience of it?

Once you have explored the space for three minutes you are then asked to leave and are told that you have one more chance to gamble. You are invited to leave your chip to see if you are the final winner of the grand prize of which you will receive acknowledgment by post. This allows the piece to continue long after the piece has been destroyed.