Dear Participants, BOdyssey is a video art project and installation that will incorporate looped projections, paintings, a photographic archive and sculptural elements that create a futuristic international communication center in which the public is invited to explore and collaborate by speculating on the technological, social and advancement of post-human kind. The device at the center of both video production and installation is a toy camera: the Barbie Cam. Barbie Cam is a 2010 special edition Barbie doll with a video camera and playback unit embedded in its body. I was introduced to this magnificent instrument and to real time video processing while being a resident artist at Signal Culture in Upstate New York. In BOdyssey I use the Barbie Cam for its symbolic content and as an actual recording device. The project intends to build upon the role of female characters in Homers Odyssey, as well as in Stanley Kubricks pivotal sci-fi film 2001: Space Odyssey. These seminal works constitute the stepping stones for Astronaut Barbies quest into the future of the human species. For the installation I have been shooting a Barbie Cam film which is my own personal Odyssey, and I have come to develop multifarious characters through the doll s lens. During my quest I was granted the chance to meet fascinating female characters, whether professional filmmakers or everyday heroines, with different cultural origins and unusual perspectives on life. I have invited them to participate in the project by providing them with their own Barbie Cam and with the request to film their respective viewpoints and perspectives of the times we are living in. I have asked these women to put forth their personal comments and statements, along with whatever playfulness they might be triggered to devise, while discovering the characteristics of the Barbie Cam as both camera and minor female character.
