Outside/In: Within These Walls
(Videoconferencing, AG P.I.G.)

Performance text entitled "With These Walls" by Nadja Masura was based on poetry of Emily Dickinson and the metaphor of the artist's ability to transport herself into nature (or different states of mind or selves) through poetry, paralleling the Access Grid's ability to bring three different outdoor environments into the indoor performance space (a black box theater). As the mythological icon of Dickinson asks questions of life, death, and love she is answered in the form of her own poetry via herself (or three Shes) in outdoor settings in Ottawa, Maryland, and Utah. The real-time interactions create the sense of a room with portholes to other places, where local climates differ greatly seen in bare branches, buds, and full blown spring---so that in a sense three real-places converge in the fictional place of the theatre. The performance was the second stage of the Outside-In project with members of the Art Grid community, testing the possibility of transmitting from outdoor environments with PIGs and other set-ups rather than office to office transmissions.