Questionaire: Raindance

1. With what kind of Intention the real public urban space was chosen as place for the project? Are everybody's accessibility all day or public sphere… an important issue for the project?

The piece was originall designed for presentation at the Swatch Pavilion in the 1998 expo in Lisbon. It was designed to engage visitors to the pavilion in a playful interactive situation, during which they and their moving umbrellas became an animated feature of the facade of the pavilion.
Circumstances of presentation at Ars Electronica:
I won a prize at the Ars Electronica so they invited me to present the piece during the festival week. I requested an outdoor space both for practical reasons and because of the inherently public (participatory) nature of the work. As things evolved, the OK Centrum Staff suggested that we stage a smaller version of the piece in the Hauptplatz as a sort of advertisment to entice people to visit the larger version at the OK Centrum, which seemed to me to be a good idea. As (I ) expected, this small beach-shower-like version caught all kinds of passers-by - children, old people on their sunday stroll, workmen etc.

2. Shall the project make a special contribution for a new "better" public space? And what importance in that context has the use of new media?

I would hope that this kind of experience improves the quality of the public space. A temporary exhibition like this, however can only have a temporary effect. As regards "new media" most of it is just TV all over again, and does not engage the spectator actively enough to make much difference. RainDance, while not "new" media but perhaps "never media" succeeds, I think, because it catches people by surprise - the