WEBVTT

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solid flute tone

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flute tone continues

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my name is Adnan Naseem Khan, I'm a film maker

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in Dallas, Texas, United States

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my profound journey to Greece, exploring

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Greece, began when one of my professors and good friend

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Max Kazemzadeh invited me to film this

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majestic journey of reliving the myth of

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Melissani Cave in the form of an art installation and

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he told me it would be an interactive audio visual installation

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to actually illustrate the myth. It sounded

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astonishing and fascinating and I was really excited to

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visit Kefalonia island, I should say the island with miraculous

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surprises. (water sounds small splashes, with music)

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(music beats)

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(music with sounds of photo camera clicks)

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(music)

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My name is Max Kazemzadeh, I'm a professor at

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Gallaudet University in Washington, DC.

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I was invited by the Ionian Center

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and just in some discussions with Rita Blaik, who

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is a PhD student/candidate in material sciences at UCLA

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we started to discuss some of the things

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via skype that Kefalonia had to

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offer. One major component was myth.

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There was one myth in particular that was quite interesting, and that was the myth of Melissani.

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and Melissani was a nymph

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Nymphs are sort of super-human and..

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sub-god-like, and are there to entertain the gods

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bring dancing, joy, life, love, creativity...

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energy, to the god's

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house, and the story of the nymphs was very interesting

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The nymphs actually guarded the waterways

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and the plant-life... the spiritual world.

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and so rarely seen by human eye

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they would hide in caves and certain areas of the river

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and didn't travel much

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Anyway, there was one Melissani nymph in particular

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who fell in love with a satyr

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named Pan. Turns out that Pan was a satyr

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kind of half man, half goat...with the horns and the furry

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legs...and um, and Melissani fell in love with

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this character that played a flute that

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seduce the nymphs. Well it turns out that this story of

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Melissani was a tragedy, because Pan being

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the musician that he was, kept evading the love of

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and maybe relationships, um in particular the one with

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Melissani, and Melissani was heartbroken to the point where she threw

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herself into the Melissani cave lake, which

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is now called "The Melissani Cave Lake"

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and committed suicide. During the discussions with Rita Blaik, I thought this was really interesting

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that there was this myth, this mythical character, this whole mythical story

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that was directly connected

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with an actual physical location. I started to think about technology

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can expand the scope of human action

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in such a way to where it makes us super-human

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on some level. And so this became the impetus

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for this project in Melissani, to build interactive environments

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interactive systems that would be able to

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extend or expand the scope of human action within a space

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So, in this process

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I started to think about people that were friends of mine

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around the world that were specialists, conceptually

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and technically in these arenas

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and also people that I liked to work with in the past, so I

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invited them all to come, and instead of developing

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a project prior to coming and installing it

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as I seem to usually do, I invited them

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to come to Kefalonia and to build the project

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onsite, to conceive the project onsite and to build the project onsite

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with people from Kefalonia that would like to collaborate and corroborate

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with our project, and so we all

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arrived one by one here with this idea

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of reliving the myth through technology, and

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expanding the scope of human action, and um

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the last two weeks we've been researching

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the sites and sounds of Kefalonia

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and the myths. We've been interviewing individuals in

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Kefalonia, um, getting their opinion about what the Melissani

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myth means to them and actually what they remember of the

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myth of Melissani, and integrating all of this into a

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um, interactive exhibition performance

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within the cave of Melissani

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so the process, the evolution of the

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project has arrived

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at a point where we are building, instead of an exhibition space that would stay

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up for a month or two, we decided to

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develop a um, performance exhibition in the lake

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a one night event that would last two to three hours

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in the Melissani Lake. So we got approval for the lake, to work in the space

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There are boat-men because we have to embark

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from the entry-point through the lake to a mound

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in the lake that we are setting up projectors, computers

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um, we've already laid down cable for power

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um, we've sort of

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wired this lake so that it's ready for interaction

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and so at 7PM

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the exhibition and performance will begin. Visitors will come from

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Melissani Lake City, from all of

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areas around Kefalonia that we've visited and handed out fliers

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There's excitement in the air, it's really nice. They will line up

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and they'll each jump in a boat. There are three boats

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Boat-men will paddle them through

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the lake as a kind of water-tour. And through

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this tour each boat will be given a cell phone

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that will allow the visitors in each boat

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to interact with the Melissani characters

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with the projections and with the sounds, as an

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interface to connect to Pan, who will be performing

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live in the cave with his flute.

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The boat-ride will last

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probably 20 minutes, 25 minutes

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We'll have people cycling through and then at the end

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there will be

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some kind of sort of climax, and

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from what I understand from the people I've spoken to

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from the municipality, from some of the art centers here, and from the

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citizens here, nothing like this has ever been done before

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in the lake, and um, I've never done anything like this before, so I'm really excited

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to have this opportunity to be here.

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(music continues)

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(music continues)

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(music continues)