Dennis Del Favero: Pentimento, 2001

»Pentimento« was produced as an interactive video installation and interactive DVD-ROM during Dennis Del Favero's Research Fellowship at ZKM in 2001. The Interactive Video Installation comprises an eight metre square room with integrated vision based motion detection system articulated to a computer narrative database which interacts with the viewer's movements. The results of these interactions are delivered across four separate projection and five discrete acoustic systems within the installation room.
The project explores a news report detailing the discovery of an unidentified body in bushland on the outskirts of Sydney. A young man and woman are arrested. They accuse each other of murdering their father whom they allege was sexually abusing them. The crime is reconstructed by means of the specific patterns of viewer and database interactions. These interactions evoke a large scale and evolving memory whose fragments comprise the separate narrative fragments of each of the protagonists - father, brother, sister and the murder scene itself. Each of the four separate projection and acoustic systems can be operated both independently and in synchrony with the others in a number of diverse and complex patterns. At a simple level a viewer is be able to sequentially evoke the various narratives of each of the protagonists as they pass each of the separate screens. At a more complex level viewers can simultaneously evoke the non-synchronic narratives of all protagonists creating a complex cascade of memories across all the screens. In each of these scenarios the viewers precipitate different memory modalities as they attempt to resolve the motivations surrounding the murder. Nevertheless nagging difficulties remain for the viewers. Some of the memories suggest that the father may not be the murder victim but is one of the perpetrators. Other memories suggest that all three protagonists may be dead and the viewers are navigating a violent struggle amongst the dead.