Rehearsal of Memory allows the viewer to move across the surface of a body marked with scars and tattoos. This body is a composite, made from images scanned straight from the skins of all the participants, including the artist. The body appears on the screen only in parts, and at an intimate proximity. Each of the marks made on the body act as a gateway to the other layers of text, video, spoken words and music; a click on the mouse bringing us stories about the lives and memories of the participants, both inside and outside the institution. The computer manipulation of the image of the body, the use of text and the alteration of constituent sounds and video images serve both to conceal the identity of individuals - a legal requirement - and remind us of the complexity and contradictions within all individuals.
The marked body is monochrome, the colour muted; its aesthetic more reminiscent of surveillance images, newspaper photographs or film noir, in direct contradiction with the sharp, colourful excesses of most computer art work. The sounds are haunting, repetitive and unsettling.
Rehearsal of memory turns the viewer into a voyeur in an attempt to challenge our assumptions of normality, the complex multi-layered picture bring the lives of the patient into an uncompromising proximity with the viewer.