Connected:07 is a project that plays with connecting different realities. The project is initiated by cym and consists of two phases. The first phase, the analog phase, took place during summer 2007 and was focusing on connections in the real space. The second phase, the digital phase, focuses on connecting the real space and the virtual space and will be presented during the NCC07, the mur.at Netart Community Convention in November 2007.

Real and virtual spaces can be found anywhere. The real space used for the Connected:07 project is an old farm in South-East Austria. This old building is not in use anymore as a farm, but still shows all the traces of a traditional small farm. Since August 2005 cym is turning the farm into a small art center. As the first phase of the Connected:07 project, six different artists were invited to spend some time at this empty farm and create art works, inspired by the abandoned building, its history and its surroundings. Between July and September 2007 Belinda and Boris Ziegler, Eva Nina Cajnko, Franz Bauer, Luka Prinčič, Nicole Pruckermayr and Primož Oberžan created art works in and around the old farm using materials and ideas found inside and nearby the location.

Eva Nina Cajnko started the project by creating giant spider webs all around the old house. The spider webs, some of them more than six meters wide, were placed on locations where they are usually removed to clean the house: in a corner above the door, on the attic, in the window, etc. They were made from thin ropes, carefully knotted together, reminding of traditional crafts. Altogether she created eight spider webs, one for each day that she had spent in Wd8.

The spider webs were followed by a sound installation made by Luka Prinčič. He placed his installation inside a more than 100 years old wardrobe. This wardrobe was the wedding present for the parents of the woman that used to live in Wd8 before cym moved in and turned it into an art center. It is one of the many objects that were left inside the farm when the old woman moved out. The sound installation inside the wardrobe was made using only free/open source software. It is running on two old Pentium I computers, one of them found in Wd8, the other in the local Used-PC shop in Ilz.

A project that lastet all summer was the pig-project by Belinda and Boris Ziegler. They decided to create a lifesize pig for the pigsty. As a first step, to get the exact measurements for the animal, a real pig in one of the neighbour's houses was measured. During the next two months a lifesize pig, made from wood, chicken wire, old newspapers and finally polyester, was slowly emerging. About 50 small pigs made from clay by many different people were created during the same time.

Inspired by Gsellmann's Weltmaschine, located in a farm not far from Wd8, Nicole Pruckermayr started to build a machine especially for Wd8. This project started with some tours around the area collecting old iron and other interesting parts. The local second-hand bicycle shop in Ottendorf sponsored some old bicycle parts and some more chains were donated by the Dorfmuseum in Altenmarkt. Also a nearby farm, very similar to Wd8, that was going to be destroyed, served as a good source for materials. And slowly a machine started to grow in one of the Wd8-rooms. A machine that can be played via an old bicycle in the Wd8 courtyard, that was fixed onto its place via a very nice brick-laying action by Maria and Martina Schwab.

The same pile of old iron and found tools served as a source of material for the sculpture of Primož Oberžan. In less than three days he made a composition on one of the old doors in the courtyard. Inspired by the environment he created a creature made from old tools and other found materials on the big wooden door of the pigsty. The creature, built around a shovel and a rake connected together, turned out to be a shaman for Walkersdorf. A shaman, with its shovel going down and the rake going up, connecting the earth and the sky together.

And last but not least, Franz Bauer documented the whole process from July until September with his analog photo camera. On nine analog films, each with only 36 photos, he captured all the Connected:07 artists and their works. At the same time he made a photo series with impressions of the Wd8 building. The photos were printed out in black and white and presented on a clothes line in the cow barn. In the old Wd8 kitchen another selection of the photos was running as a slideshow on a computer built into the old kitchen cupboard, with the monitor behind the little curtain and the keyboard inside the drawer.

The first phase of the Connected:07 project finished on September 23, 2007, when the pig from Belinda and Boris Ziegler was finally ready and was presented to the public via a walk through the village, before it was placed into the Wd8 pigsty.

As a second phase of the Connected:07 project, the Wd8 farm will be connected with a virtual reconstruction of the farm. This reconstruction, created in PD/Gem, is a simple 3d-model of the real building. Via a webcam connection, the real building and its visitors are visible in the virtual space. At the same time the virtual space, with its virtual avatars, is projected onto the walls of the real building.

The almost real size projection of the virtual space onto the walls of the real building not only enables people in the real space to see the virtual space, it also creates a feeling of being part of the virtual space. The webcam then grabs the image of the people in the real space mixed with the projection of the virtual space and sends it back into the virtual reconstruction, which is again projected into the real space. In this way a loop occurs that completely mixes the real and the virtual space, creating a kind of 'third space'.

The installation plays with mixing these different realities. The setup is presented as a playground. Elements of the different art works created for the real space during the first phase of the Connected:07 project will occur in the virtual space. Different objects in the real space and in the virtual space will trigger the communication between visitors in the real space and in the virtual space. While during the first phase of the Connected:07 project artists were looking for ways of communication within the real, analog world, the installation in the second phase of the project is looking for ways of communication between virtual reality and real life. At the same time the installation is questioning our experiences of living in cyberspace and sharing different realities and serves as a starting point for discussions and interactions.

The installation will be presented during the NCC07 in Graz in November 2007. As part of the installation, original elements of the real farm will be installed in the convention space. During the convention the virtual reconstruction of the farm will emerge and a playground will occur where visitors in the real space and visitors in the virtual space are invited to interact with each other, creating a new Wd8 space.