Don't Stop Now: Art and Artifacts from Dreamspace

A Fishbon Experience

Fishbon encourages collaboration between artists, engineers, writers, designers, performers and participants to create unique, real-time interactive experiences that speak to contemporary audiences.

Immersive Environments To contain and enhance the effects of the collaborative experience, performance environments are self-contained. Once entered, the resulting mood/sensory “world” is continuous. There is no lapse in the “experience bubble” until the event is either finished or the participant leaves it.

Interactivity Since Fishbon experience elements are designed to be dynamic, interfaces are provided that allow participants to make changes on-the-fly. This interaction may involve volume, color, shapes, and plots. The participant is encouraged to use the tools provided to create their own experience.

Narrative Structures Most projects have a storyline with characters, locations and events. As a participant, you’re immersed in a world that’s active. Things happen and you can affect outcomes with the choices you make.

Collaborative Fishbon projects rely on the genius of the group, not the individual. The group is made up of individuals, but it’s the interplay that’s most important to us. To create rich experiences, an extensive skillset is required. The collective provides access to a much wider range of capabilities than any individual is likely to possess.

Contemporary Themes Fishbon is interested in culture and movement. Projects seek to understand and address themes that affect participants in real time.

Build Me a World

There’s a big difference between observing and doing. Observing places distance between me and my experience. Someone else is in charge of it—an artist who’s out there exploring and sending me status reports in the form of art objects. They’re delicious sometimes, but..

“Here’s an artifact from the journey I’m on, isn’t it cool?”

“Yeah, sometimes—a lot of times when you get better at knowing which artists are good tour guides—but still, it’s your experience, not mine.”

“That’s the problem. I want it to be as much my experience as possible. Give me something to play with, give me a context, an adventure and let me play. Get out of here. It’s like a videogame, really. Build me a world. Let me play in it—let me inhabit it, let me use it to learn about myself and I’ll always appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me.”

Fishbon is experimenting with “world-making.” We want to work with “context”. That’s what interests us.

“I’m an artist, sure—whatever that means—but what I want to do is get out into the woods of experience. I want to put some cabins out there and invite people—friends, because if you’re spending time in one of the cabins I built, you’re automatically a friend—and see how you experience it. What do you do? And from that I learn more about the world, and myself and what’s really important. That’s what Fishbon is about for me. I’m in love with the idea of creating something that, maybe, in its rarified form, is like an elixir. It takes you somewhere you’ve never been, and enfolds you in an adventure that heals, and exhilarates, and makes you wiser about the things you care about.”

-Clay Bodine, October 2005