Interactivity and electronic art are phrases that the public generally associates with intimidating high-tech gear, but there's nothing inaccessible or unnecessarily complicated about Touch:Touché. Sensual, visual and directly involving, each piece allows the viewer to engage, and enjoy, on a number of levels from the immediate and tactile to the more intellectual. This exhibition of works by Thecla Schiphorst and Daniel Jolliffe embodies the essence of interactive art as it explores issues of presence, perception, movement and control.

The show includes Daniel Jolliffe's Room for Walking and Thecla Schiphorst's Body Maps: Artifacts of Touch.

Room for Walking is a mobile sculpture consisting of a wheeled cart and video projection screen. By physically moving the wagon, the viewer becomes involved in the control of the flow of images. Room for Walking is the third in a series of works by Vancouver-based sculptor Jolliffe that are based on the premise that interactivity should require stronger action than just a simple point-and-click. Jolliffe has exhibited in the US and across Canada.

Body Maps consists of a velvet-draped table shrouded in darkness that offers itself up to the touch of the viewer. Pressure pads beneath the velvet stimulate a response in a video projection of a female figure, set against a number of elemental backgrounds. Body Maps is a recent work by 1997 Petro Canada award-winner Thecla Schiphorst. Schiphorst is a media artist, performer, choreographer and designer. She created the Lifeforms computer choreography program, which has been used, extensively in her collaborations with Merce Cunningham.

Touch:Touch� is curated by independent media artist, curator and writer Nina Czegledy. Her latest projects include Art and Biomedicine presentations at CAiiA and ISEA98, and the Aurora Universalis multicomponent.

Click here to view an archive of the original Touch:Touch� website.