Rasmus Vuori.

India was on my mind constantly.

What I needed was the warm sun, friendly people, all happy and relaxed –  I was daydreaming of what I felt I was missing in my gloomy and cold northern reality.

November wasn’t the best of times to spend sitting in a bar in a hotel in Quebec anyway. I was like a zulu-warrior forced to wear a uniform, existing in the wrong time and place, forced into something that didn’t fit and wasn’t me.

As I was sipping a whiskey in the bar, in my mind I was somewhere else. Charlie and Oscar, two good friends of mine, had just left for Maine to play golf, trying to find a course that was still open this late in the season and then to go watch baseball in New York, the series gone way late this year. I had chosen not to go. Not that I would mind the Yankees – just I really couldn’t get excited about being outdoors in the cold weather.

Mike was still in town, in the same bar, at the same table – but still far away, somehow disconnected. His communication was the one-way kind. He was completely focused babbling about his now finished on and off relationship with Juliette. That was when I noticed a smile from across the room on the other side of the bar. I looked at her, and she looked at me back, her eyes filled with a charming comfortable and magnetic happiness. I had seen her a few times before. She was gorgeous.

Mike bluntly interrupted me. “Bravo Romeo! That X-ray vision of yours totally gives you away” he heckled.

I focused on my drink, took a sip, didn’t comment. Mike’s attitude was the macho one, it’s all a game, an adventure. I couldn’t care less about that. But she really had answered to my glimpse and I just couldn’t stop thinking of her. Mike however had already gone back to his old rants. His attention span wasn’t very long.

“Alpha males make bad parents” he continued, getting back to his drama with Juliette. “can you ever imagine a toddler chase me while chanting papa, papa? No way, not me.”

My suspicion was of course that, that was what he really wished for. All his chasing alligators in the Mississippi delta or tracking condors in Sierra Nevada was of course a lot of fun, but he obviously was missing something. But he kept focusing too much on the wrongs in his life, so that what he thought was a happy foxtrot turned out to be a dramatic tango and he couldn’t ever change the track.

I looked at her again. Mike’s words were now merely an echo in my head. He had started repeating an old story about an adventure in Peru, when he almost got jailed in Lima as he had hitchhiked from Colombia in a truck that suddenly got abandoned in the middle of the street when surrounded by cops and he was left with a kilo of cocaine and a lot of explaining to do. A weird and funny story, but I knew every twist and version of it already.

She just looked beautifully happy. I felt something irresistibly attractive with her.

“I have to go” I interrupted Mike and got up. I heard him mumble something ironic in the background.

“Hi, I’m Victor!”.

“My name is India.” she replied. “What took you so long?”.

Bio ~ Rasmus Vuori.

Rasmus Vuori is a new media pioneer, artist and educator – who has been working with art and technology since the early 80‘s through hacking – always with a focus on communication, education, cultural activism and artistic practices. Rasmus got his MA degree in New Media from the University of Art and Design Helsinki.

Rasmus has actively been participating in both commercial as well as non-commercial projects, usually as a team member designing behaviour and interaction, combining conceptual thinking with low level practical implementations  – in art exhibitions, theatre performances as well as for educational institutions. Generative storytelling, interactive art and experience design are his main professional interests.

Rasmus’ approach to technology has always remained instrumental, with an emphasis on art and culture. Rasmus is currently teaching and researching new ways communication in Media Lab Helsinki at the Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department of Media.