drift , by Australian digital media artist Alex Davies (in collaboration with with Daniel Heckenberg), is a sightseeing telescope allowing the viewer to elastically manipulate time and space. This site specific installation was presented on a cruise boat for ISEA 2004.

The telescope features a realtime 180 degree panorama of the scene.

Looking through the telescope to the front of the craft provided a real-time depiction of the scene. But as the telescope was panned around towards the rear, time stretched and slowed enabling the user to examine the environment with considerable detail. Panning further towards the rear, time not only slows, but reverses, drifting back over the previous journey.

Just as our own memory is not completely under our control, the telescopic views became smeared and distorted as the dimensions of time and space interfered.

Cross-posted in networked_performance.