Possessed is an online artwork commissioned by Artsway, contemporary visual arts venue, New Forest in Dec 2000 and funded by the Arts Council of England. The project was live from May 2001 - February 2003.

Possessed grew from an interest in the way audiences develop relationships with artworks and in generative time-based works where events are created as a result of interaction and computation. Before Possessed we had produced software driven works for specific audiences in public spaces. We were keen to develop a software work that challenged existing notions of software art, encouraging users to develop a relationship with the work over an extended time frame of up to six months. We were keen to reverse our previous psychology of building one work to communicate to many and instead build works that moulded themselves around the individual users. This was aided by the way we could use the web to deliver the software to the user, placing their computer in the hands of our web-based psychic medium.

Possessed explored our relationship with unexplained digital phenomena. The user downloaded two pieces of software from the web: a Spook Generator, which creates spooks, and a Spook Player, to play spooks. Once installed on a user’s computer, the spooks would gradually make themselves known through their behaviour made visible to the user on screen. They could be friendly, violent, perverted or prophetic. After a time spooks began to ask questions. By responding, users would further affect their spook¹s development. Many played pranks unexpectedly: moving icons, opening windows and giving fake error messages. Love letters left by spooks on their hard drives fascinated some users. All spooks would ask the user to help them find a file. Users began to contact each other via the Possessed website trying to find the code their spook was searching for. Every user could experience a completely different phenomenon. For some, the experience was addictive; others fell in love with their spooks; others found them too annoying and deleted the spook software from their machine.

Links:

Interview on Possessed 2002

Image documentation on Possessed 2001

Review on Possessed 2001

Rhizome artbase selection 2002