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Caro McCaw
Caroline is a designer and teacher based at the University of Otago. Amongst many other projects, in 2000 she began the 'Picnic'
series of international art gatherings, combining performers and picnicers from around the world via webcast
and MUSH.
*The Picnic* occured in four places around New Zealand, and on the Internet, simultaneously at 12-4pm on October 14. *The
Picnic* included a live webcam performance from Amsterdam and an interactive MUSH virtual environment, and aimed
to develop the idea of connecting between picnicking people and places, with the shared concept of participating
in a picnic-like ritual. A kind of urban art terrorism, all these works are temporary, one must catch them when
you can.
http://picnic.otago.ac.nz
The Mount Iron Resort Virtual Hotel
Caroline McCaw with Martin Kean, Richard Mitchell, David Scott and Michael Findlay
Caroline McCaw's projects explore technology's (both old and new) ability to develop communities and connections across
geographic boundaries, often between strangers. Her sprawling project The Picnic, (http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/webwork/
and http://picnic.otago.ac.nz), enabled participants to take part in a picnic-like ritual of food, discussion and events,
occurring in multiple physical locations around New Zealand and as a virtual MUSH environment, while Animalia with Angela
Main (http://01sj.org/content/view/171/49/) 'proposes a masquerade as a means to augment social interaction'.
The Mount Iron Resort Virtual Hotel, McCaw's collaborative project for SCANZ, is a MUD: a multi-user text-based chat environment
(also containing some objects and robots and with graphic representations of rooms) currently used by the University of
Otago as a collaborative learning space for Design and Tourism students. In that context students use the MUD as a test-case;
a virtual environment in which to role play scenarios around hospitality and tourism.
For the duration of SCANZ the Mount Iron Resort Virtual Hotel will be off-season to university students and instead accommodate
the participants of SCANZ. The Hotel will offer a virtual space, hosted by McCaw's project team, where the SCANZ artists
will be able to 'book in, attend text-based descriptions of simultaneous or pre-programmed events at SCANZ, and relax and
unwind a little'.
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