Liss Platt is looking to get photographic messages from a high-tech bottle she plans to
launch in Newfoundland's Exploits River Thursday.

The associate professor of communication studies and multimedia is planning to
launch
a digital camera and GPS device encased in a polycarbonate orb, slightly larger than a
beach ball, into the river at the small town of Badger, in north-central Newfoundland,
where she hopes it will travel more than 30 km downstream to the town of Grand Falls-
Windsor. The camera is set to snap photos of the orb's journey every few seconds, while
the GPS device will allow her to track the trip in real-time using Google Maps.

The project is a performance art piece called “Technological Exploits” and will be a
part
of the Art Ex festival in Grand Falls-Windsor. It will incorporate a live map of the orb's
travels and, after the camera's retrieval, photos and video from the trip.

“The project is meant to explore the pervasive influence of technology in all aspects
of
our lives,” said Platt, who pointed out that the Exploits River has long been exploited in
the name of progress, including its use for hydro dams and mining. “It's art, but it will
give us the opportunity to find out how an unguided technological traveler experiences
and represents the river.”

Platt plans to combine high-tech with low-tech by following the orb with a river
guide,
attempting to maintain visual contact with the floating gadgets. She said that although
the project is part of an art exhibition, it's meant to look like a science experiment.

“It offers a parody of science that embraces the detached observation of cameras
and
tracking devices while they travel over the embedded knowledge of actual river
explorers,” she said. “By combining high-tech equipment with low-tech approaches, I
hope to link the past and the present and playfully critique science and exploration.”

This will not be the first time Platt has employed unique approaches to
performance art:
in the past her material has included the marks left by hockey pucks shot against a wall,
and footage from a camera mounted to her back while mountain biking.

“There is a lot going on as part of this piece, but the major theme holding it all
together
is of course the river,” she said. “It will be very interesting to see how something
completely unguided will view the Exploits.”

Platt knows that things could go wrong with the project – everything from losing
track
of the orb, it getting stuck along the river or moving too quickly or slowly – but accepts
that failure is a potential outcome, just as it is in science.

“Lots of things could go wrong, but it's precisely the failure and limits of
technology
that I'm interested in exploring.”