Indigestion combines an interactive video with a virtual environment. The image of two dinner companions is projected onto a horizontal screen whose shape, size, and height precisely correspond to those of an actual dining table. The familiarity of the scene—although it is flattened into two dimensions—is critical to the sense of transgression the piece engenders. Stepping into the installation is like intruding upon a private conversation whose course you can redirect.
A touch screen offers the viewer a menu of stereotypical characters to choose from. The characters are of ambiguous relation to one another and are defined only by their voices, their accoutrements, and the gestures of their hands.
The viewer activates the video by selecting two of the characters, a choice the viewer can change at any point throughout the virtual meal. Each path deviation is preceded by one of different animations that resets the table accordingly. The dialogue is conceived to maintain narrative continuity in any branching pattern.
The variable narrative structure of the interactive video simultaneously affects the progress of the nearby virtual environment. A participant using a motion-sensing device can navigate through the magnified computer-generated space of the dinner table. This virtual view is projected—in real time and in three dimensions—for an audience of viewers wearing stereoscopic 3-D glasses. Moving forward on one screen creates the sense of moving away on the other.
This magnified viewpoint, in combination with the full range of motion on the table surface, offers several alternative narrative possibilities. The table presents several streams of information that propel the narrative in different directions. An archetypal blackmail scenario, for example, is disguised as repartee about food.
