In the immersive environment of the internet, where everyday people display the most intimate fragments of their lives on world wide web pages, how do we delineate public and private space? When our simple electronic lines of connection become shifting nodes in a fluid network, how do we define who and where we are? How is self-identity and the recognition of others re-coded in virtual space? How do we 'reach out and touch someone' digitally?

Line questions how cultural, capital and philosophical values are mutated, warped and curved in the infinite virtual space of the cyberpolis, investigating theses sensory and spacial dilemmas through an interactive web site tracking the virtual relationship between two people whose physical locations includes the Illawarra coastline, inner city Sydney, and a business district in Tokyo; On-line their intimate communications and private images become public property, their fantasy of each other fuelled by a lack of physical reality, their personal boundaries blurred in the virtuality of the screen domain.

The original accompanying gallery installation, now document on the site, reconstructs fragments of locality and identity through photographic architectural and landscape imagery, and illuminates the transparent lines that connect, disrupt and discipline our lives with laser light.

Melinda Rackham
1998

see http://www.subtle.net/exhibit.html