LAND LINE
‘Land Line’ is an interactive animated artwork by Shae Rooke and Jess Dubblu, created during the lockdowns in Melbourne, Australia. Commissioned for West Projections. Land Line was available to play online 21st – 30th August 2020.
Shae and Jess live less than a block from each other, in the before-times they would see each other almost every day. Communication was in-person. Conferencing apps lacked the intimacy and immediacy of face to face.
As lockdown continued, they began playing online games to pass the time and expand beyond their restricted physical world. Becoming nostalgic, they dreamed of connecting their households with a tin can telephone. The benefits of a tin can telephone being that:
- You can cut the line to reflect social distancing requirements.
- Tin cans can be easily cleaned.
- Tin cans (unlike conferencing apps) give you the vibrations of a person’s voice. A physical connection to a person that you cannot touch.
For WP20, they have created a digital game. ‘Land Line’, consisting of two tin cans, cords tangled together, thus unusable. The player must complete the ‘Introspective Speculative Ontology Questionnaire’ (ISO), in order to untangle the cans and speak with the outside world.
‘Land Line’ is a reaction to being painfully close to normality, both physically and figuratively, but with it just out of reach.
‘Land Line’ takes Shae and Jess’ coping strategies of being: contemplative, task oriented and creative to get through this shit show.