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Synthetic Shopping Mall, 2001 | Synopsis HYPNOMART uses covert footage of shoppers in a suburban mall to study human behaviour, and as source material for the artists' own manipulations of unsuspecting consumers. In these comprehensively surveilled and clinical environments, tiny gestures are magnified and transmit virally through the crowd. In the Hypnomart watching and voyeurism are inextricable. Whether the subjects of surveillance are shopping in a trance or enacting compulsive rituals for the cameras, sometimes they align themselves in patterns like microbes or herds, or create dances that last mere seconds. Background Information HYPNOMART was devised as a collaboration by artists Joe Magee and Alistair Gentry and commissioned in 2000 by the Arts Council of England and Channel 4. 'Characters' were selected from hours of digital video footage and removed from their original environments. The mall was then re-populated and reorganised to create a bizarre, yet logical new environment. Sampled sounds from the mall were similarly selected, manipulated and reorganised. The emergent 'story' of Hypnomart highlights the journeys of entire family units to shopping centres. Are they just buying things or are they fulfiling other, more primordial, needs? Observing people as they go about their shopping often reveals an apparent state of hypnosis. In passing through the revolving doors the shoppers enter a shared drug-like trance, because the environment is designed to be (or appear) clinical, contained and safe. The proliferation and awareness of surveillance cameras heightens the sense that one is on a set, and on display. The film in part adopts the role of a surveillance camera operator; how can he, she or (increasingly) it deconstruct and interpret such a barrage of minute clues and subtle behaviours? © Joe Magee and Alistair Gentry 2001 | |||||||
A film by Joe Magee and Alistair Gentry | ||||||||
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TODDLERS 168k Shockwave LOOP CLONES v PLANCTON 168k Shockwave LOOP PERAMBULATIONS E-Flyer 160k Quicktime Movie StReams at 20k/sec HYPNOMART Exterior Still | ||||||||
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