The Salt Passages
This interactive audio-visual project reflects moments of everyday thoughts and experiences of people living in Teesside, England. The faces and voices of the 15 participants are combined with video footage and ambient soundscapes that can be explored using through a CD-ROM.
Teesside, acknowledged as being one of the poorest regions in England, is a vibrant and culturally rich area undergoing significant social and economic transformation. This project, developed whilst Artist in Residence at the Virtual Reality and Innovation Centre, University of Teesside, 1998-9, attempts to capture these changes through the words of people who live and work in the area.
Mark Robinson writes of the project ”The Salt Passages is one of the best evocations of Teesside in the 1990’s, capturing the light, the dark, the blood, the sweat, the tears, the bad habits, the humour, the sentimentality and the warmth, the old-fashioned decency of the place, all on the cusp of a new century, and all rather besieged. It is, however, more than that. It is an expression of the values which make society more than a place to go shopping, life more than something we need training for, and community more than a way of defining a market sector. The Salt Passages is not Virtual Reality in the technical sense, but in the artistic sense: it allows us to explore an imaginary world with real shadows.”
Read Mark’s compete introduction Teesside and the Kingdom of Shadows
Below is a short screen recording of The Salt Passages CD-ROM that captures a sense of the project.
The CD-ROM was launched by Cleveland Art in Middlesbrough, 2000. The Salt Passages CD-ROM has since been presented at the following events:
FUTURSONIC
Manchester, England
July 2000
V I P E R 20. INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL FOR FILM VIDEO AND NEW MEDIA
Basel, Switzerland
October 25 – 29 2000
MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL
Frieslan, The Netherlands
September 7-21 2001
EUROPEAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL
Osnabrueck, Germany
April 25-29 2001
d>art 01
Sydney, Australia
June /July 2001
Produced 1998-99 by: Geoff Broadway
Interactive Design Consultant: Sean Clark
CD-ROM Design and Packaging: Chris Gorris
