An Uncommon Affair At Tooting Bec Common is an interactive installation work. The content of the installation is a film divided into four tightly wound stories. The plot points of the four stories are strategically written so that the stories can be mixed and matched, and read backwards or forwards. Audience members can change how the stories are read interactively via an electronic ouija board:
Ouija Board
The ouija board is capable of simultaneously controlling the outcome of four storylines. Each storyline is presented on one of four projection screens, which are arranged in a square pattern around the audience:
Screen
While the audience directs the four stories via the ouija board, the storylines interact with each other. Although the four storylines will be out of sync, the resulting experience is a culmination of the four interconnecting storylines through the potential story terrain. Synchronous, asynchronous, convergent and divergent patterns occurring between the screens are highlighted as events that affect the content across all of the screens as a whole.
The Story
The story of an An Uncommon Affair At Tooting Bec Common centers on Rosemary Brown, a medium who is communicating with deceased composers and writing down their latest works. Much of the story takes place in Rosemary’s lounge, where she lives near the common of a working class borough of London called Tooting Bec. With the help of her friends, the Bishop of Southwark, and Dr. Ian Parrot (a respected musicologist and professor from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Rosemary has been able to arrange an interview with the BBC’s third programme.
A fraud that is trying to fool the public for her own personal gain, Rosemary’s deepest desire is to help her composer friends from the spirit world, in particular Franz Liszt. As Edna Moseley, a rookie BBC reporter, uncovers Rosemary’s deception, Rosemary is finally vindicated as genuine as several onlookers witness her transcribe Liszt’s latest masterwork from beyond.
Several conspiracies are afoot in order to keep this evidence from falling into the wrong hands. The Bishop’s ties to past obligations lead him and Dr. Parrot into a cat and mouse game of suspicion with the brash and devious cameraman, Mr. John Naffis, and his ever watchful boss, Mr. Pierce Ingoldsby.
Obviously for Rosemary things are not as simple as they seem. Soon she will find out that the interview is just a ruse, and her plans of sharing music from beyond are going to be derailed. As enemies become allies and friends become foes, the ultimate question will be, “Are you a skeptic or a believer?” Either way you choose you will find that in the end there is no right or wrong, truth or lie. Instead, the pure essence of the story lies somewhere... in between
About MarkDavid Hosale
MarkDavid Hosale is an artist and composer who is a Ph.D. candidate at UCSB in Media Arts and Technology. MarkDavid's interests are interdisciplinary, but the connecting tissue comes from thinking of art and music as a narrative. Particularly, the kinds of narrative that are structured using non-linear representations of information, time and space. The final result of this production is based on his ideas and research in this area and will play a large part in his dissertation work.
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