The Siren

There have always been stories told about the beautiful, alluring and ultimately dangerous Sirens who lured sailors to their untimely deaths. It has always been men who told stories of the Sirens and these cautionary tales were used to warn men of the dangers of the seductive female. The Siren, like her biblical counterpart Salome, became synonymous with the “femme fatale” and ultimately symbolises the female sex. She is simply a creation of man, merely a sexed being. She does not exist in her own right and she has no voice of her own. 'The Siren' is, therefore, a digital performance that uses the image and plays to the preconceived notions of this mythical temptress to explore the true nature of the audiences gaze, their innate desire to watch and how the female form is represented within art and film. By playing to and embodying these traditional clichés - beautiful, dangerous and always naked - the film seeks to both challenge these sexual clichés and to finally give a strong and powerful voice to the Siren. Filmed entirely underwater in slow motion and originally projected as a life size holographic film installation, the film makes the impossible - a women living and breathing underwater - become a reality. Beautiful and haunting, she exists within the substantial nothingness of the screen as pure artifice and constructs her own reality, where she transcends the sexual clichés attached to the perception of the Siren and forces her audience to not only acknowledge her presence, power and autonomy, but to question who is in control of the gaze: the watcher or the watched? 'The Siren' was originally exhibited as a life size holographic film installation. Although intended for the medium of holographic projection, the film can exist outside of this medium as a 2-dimensional cinema projection or film installation.