EVO

Part video art installation, part scientific treatise, and part intellectual head-trip, Oliver Hockenhull's EVO is a curious hybrid that will strike some as pretentious hooey and others as thought-provoking and fun--it's highbrow eye-candy that would not be out of place in a Soho gallery, but could also be used to entertain a high school biology class. At the core of this "digital essay" is a curiously engaging exploration of how evolutionary theories, advanced by scientists ranging from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould, have impacted society. Punctuated by topical statements from a "Neotenic CyberGeisha with a nostalgic robotic voice implant" (i.e. a cute Asian girl in a geisha costume with her voice electronically altered to the point of being almost unintelligible), this stream-of-consciousness documentary (and we're using the term loosely here) includes appearances by noted paleobiologist Dr. Desmond Collins, Oxford evolutionist Dr. Richard Dawkins, and "reflections on the historical personages" of Darwin and his principal European disciple, Ernst Haeckel. It's hard to discern just what Canadian media artist/lecturer/communication theorist Hockenhull intended with this intriguing work--the overall message is a bit muddled and ethereal--but EVO is nevertheless a stimulating audio-visual experience, one that can be viewed as a 78-minute linear presentation, or in optional "mutatedits" which present the same content in different sequences. A strong optional purchase. Aud: H, C, P. (J. Shannon)