' I personally found Desert Rain to be the most complete and inspiring work I have seen in a long time, I totally loved it. Audience travelled from afar as Perth, Brisbane and Darwin to attend! The Australian artists who collaborated with Blast Theory had a most stimulating and fantastic time and the experience is destined to resonate and ripple positively through their work in the coming time.'

Leah Grycewicz, curator, dlux

The Desert Rain tour included six days of performances at Artspace where group worked with local artists to set up and perform.The group aims to confront a media saturated world in which popular culture rules, using video and computers to ask questions about the ideologies present in the information that envelops us. The work is a fast collage of images and actions, often appropriated from elsewhere.

Desert Rain uses a combination of virtual reality, installation and performance to problematise the boundary between the real and the virtual. It places participants in a Collaborative Virtual Environment in which the real intrudes upon the virtual and vice versa. It uses the real, the imaginary, the fictional and the virtual side by side and juxtaposes these elements as a means of defining them. In a world where Gulf War images echo Hollywood images, where Norman Schwarzkopf blurs into Arnold Schwarzenegger, Desert Rain looks for the feint line between the real and the fictional.

Desert Rain sends you on a mission into a virtual world ... standing on a footplate and zipped into a cubicle, each of the six team members explores motels, deserts and underground bunkers, communicating with each other within the virtual world ... a world projected onto a screen of falling water.

You have 30 minutes to find the target, complete the mission, and get to the final room, where others may have a very different idea of what actually happened out there...

Founded on a belief in collective work and an openness about creativity, Blast Theory collaborates with a wide range of creative people from DJs to dancers and CDROM designers to pop promo directors. These beliefs also underpin an extensive education and outreach programme designed to inspire and equip others with the skills to make interdisciplinary work. Blast Theory aims to make work that is direct, accessible and has something to say.

Desert Rain was presented by Australia dLux and Artspace in association with British Council Australia, the Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, Macquarie University and funded by the New Media Fund of the Australia Council.

'Desert Rain is a powerful piece and it excites curious emotions in the few viewers who are able to take part in the game. As a company, Blast Theory, seems finally to offer Britain a theatre group that delves into our popular culture to create deeply challenging work.' The Sunday Times

For more information see British Council Australia’s arts webpages.

Or go to Blast Theory’s website.