Suzanne Treister

CD ROM publication: 'No Other Symptoms - Time Travelling with Rosalind Brodsky'

Accompanied by a 124 page full colour hardback book.
Published by Black Dog Publishing Limited, London, UK 1999
ISBN: 190103366X

Order through your local bookshop or email: sales@blackdogonline.com

NEW 2015! Web emulator version of the original CD ROM - click here for further information and emulator link

Synopsis:

This CD ROM is an interactive investigation into the life of Rosalind Brodsky (an alter ego I invented in 1995 with whom I share similar Anglo/Eastern European/Jewish roots), a delusional time traveller who believes herself to be working at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in the 21st century. The Institute is a government funded research centre based in South London. Established in 2004 its mission is to carry out interventional historical, anthropological and scientific research through means of time travel.
Your journey takes the form of a tour organised by the Institute in memory of Brodsky's contribution to time travel research.
Through an investigation into Brodsky's life we can witness the often unsettling and disturbing effects of time travel upon the human mind.
The tour sheds light on much of her life, work and personal interests. During her lifetime Brodsky carried out major research in areas of film, TV, music, architecture, genetics, the history of Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, the 1960s and the Russian Revolution.
Starting at the Institute in 2058, the year of Brodsky's death, you are shown an introductory movie before entering Brodsky's study, concealed behind a memorial wall. Once in the study a tannoy announcement goes off, informing you that the institute is surrounded by an armed group of university professors and that time travel is your only escape. From the study you have many options, you may travel to her home in Bavaria and journey to her Satellite spy probe, access her electronic time travelling diary and discover the time travelling costumes and attaché cases in her wardrobe through which you can find the lift down to the Clinics from where you time travel to the homes of (and view case histories by) Freud, Jung, Klein, Lacan and Kristeva with whom Brodsky has undergone analysis, paid for with the profits from sales of her feature vibrators, album sales of her band ('Rosalind Brodsky and the Satellites of Lvov') and her time travelling cookery TV show.
This work creates a space that negotiates issues of insanity and humour, fetishism and sexuality, identity and technology, in relation to personal histories/fictions and histories of the twentieth century. See: Brodsky Bio

I made a book to house the CD ROM because of the inevitable obsolescence of the digital material. To have all images represented in book form, although non-interactive and linear, at least shows the main contents of the work.
To view all the pages of the book click here.

NB. Although the CD ROM still works on many current computers the video clips are no longer readable even with the original version of Quicktime installed in current computers.
There are many video clips all though the work as you travel around, but there are 5 main video works on which there is information and images here (click on the first 5 on the list).

I authored the CD ROM with Director 5 on a Mac using System 7. It was made cross platform for Mac and Windows users and will play the videos on most late 90s and very early 2000s computers. The relevant version of Quicktime can be installed from the CD ROM.

The work is in the collection of the Espace Multimedia Gantner in Bourogne, France and they have showing/touring rights and technological expertise on how to view and show the work using the right equipment.

 

 Rosalind Brodsky homepage Treister homepage