Artificial Changelings is an interactive laser disk and sound installation in which narrative parts are intercut with parts where the viewer has an opportunity to react. The New York artist Toni Dove looks at the relationship between modern technology and the mass audience using a story about the kleptomaniac Arathusa, a 19th-century woman from the upper classes who is confronted with the overwhelming stocks of the new department store and is prey to an almost erotic excitement. In the meantime, she dreams of a computer hacker in the distant future. The viewer can move through time and the various storylines by moving back and forth in front of the video monitor.
Toni Dove has already won the New York State Council of the Arts Prize for Electronic Media and Film for Artificial Changelings.
