A Chat with the Artist is a new media installation and performance which constructs a computer-mediated “relay-chat” live in a gallery space. This work looks at narrative through an archive of information, exploring what happens when new technologies allow stories to be literally reshuffled as in a database.

In this work, visitors are invited to interact with a computer interface — a custom-designed software program — to chat with the artist. These chat sessions are transcribed in real time by a typist (from a temp agency) sitting in the gallery receiving audio transmissions in her headphones. The typist manually archives these transcriptions in a library card catalogue in the gallery. Visitors may notice that the artist they have chatted with on-line is only a few metres away behind the gallery administrator’s desk, using muted radio transmissions to relay the chat text to the typist. The artist’s responses in the chat sessions are culled from past on-line conversations and email correspondence — information that has also been archived and referenced in the catalogue. All new chats become integrated into the database for future use.