Syndicate: DK City

[Chris Byrne <chris@cryptic.demon.co.uk>]

DK City

http://www.dk-city.net

DK City is an online urban community created by artist Lindsay Perth. The
work was created during the artist's residency in Glasgow, a collaboration
between New Media Scotland and Street Level.

The design, events and people that inhabit DK City developed from
collaborative discussion and workshops between the artist and 4 young
people from a truancy unit based within the Douglas Inch Centre, Glasgow.

Online virtual reality and 3D environments have come to be associated with
their potential for escape, the hiding of identities and utopian ideals.
The constructs which have evolved around this form of media reflect these
aims: avatars, fantasy roleplay and idealised futurist landscapes.

The young people who worked on this project have quite a different agenda
in mind. They have chosen to depict scenes from their own existence, or at
least semi-fictional versions of the same. The portrayal of scenes of
alienation and urban dereliction (the "decay city" of the title) reveal
much about the young people's attitude to the utopian planning concepts
which shaped Glasgow's architecture during the late 20th Century. By
choosing to make this explicit through vrml technologies, they deliver a
critique of the way we view and use such techniques, implying a failure of
the dream of a 'perfect' networked society. At the same time there is much
humour to be found, and an intelligent grasp of influences from other
genres of 3D computer graphics, from games to cinema and television. The
end result is a multi-layered portrait of a city as they see it, with the
quirks and foibles of everyday life intact, rather than  antialiased out of
the picture.

Lindsay Perth has been working as a digital artist with arts organisations
in Scotland for three years in the form of residencies, tutor and workshop
co-ordination. Commissioners have included New Media Scotland, Street
Level, Stills, and Project Ability. She is one of the founder members of
artists' group Elevator and continues to explore the creative uses of new
technologies.

Douglas Inch Centre School was founded by a doctor of psychology who was
researching the different causes of perpetual truancy. The School is
located within the Out-Patients Department of Forensic Psychiatry. It is a
truancy unit for 14-16 year old adolescents who have been referred to the
school via the Social Work Department.

DK City has received funding from Glasgow City Council and the Scottish
Arts Council National Lottery Fund as part of Scotland's Year of the Artist.

For further information, please contact:

New Media Scotland
P.O. Box 25065
Glasgow	G1 5YP

Tel: 0141 564 3010
Fax: 0141 564 3011
info@mediascot.org

--------------------------------------------------------
                                      info@mediascot.org
--------------------------------------------------------
New Media Scotland                 Tel. +44 141 564 3010
P.O. Box 25065, Glasgow G1 5YP     Fax. +44 141 564 3011
Scotland, UK                    http://www.mediascot.org
--------------------------------------------------------

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