Just from Cynthia is a CD-ROM that Alberto Sorbelli made during the X/Y exhibition, the contemporary part of Femininmasculin, le sexe de l'art at the Georges Pompidou Centre in 1995.

Alberto Sorbelli set up a workshop there, which brought together a team of around thirty participants from different fields, working throughout the exhibition period. The team included a film-maker (Judith Cahen), critics (Jean-Claude Lebensztejn…), programmers (Antoine Schmitt…), singers (Anne Pigalle…), graphic artists (Philippe Ducat), and many more… the CD-ROM is the final result of a process of work in situ.

He transformed an exhibition space into venue for creation and acted as a producer, capable of mobilising the time and energy of a team over several months.

The CD-ROM's composition is inspired by the format of 'people' or women's magazines. It contains a series of topical headings: people, health, beauty, leisure, etc., treated in a different manner by each of the participants.

The CD-ROM opens with a summary of the contents in the form of a 'mat' – a pink rectangle on the screen. The contents are arranged with all of the headings for each section but it is impossible to see all of the contents. You have to explore this pink fabric and choose from the sequences on offer. These include video extracts of scenes from short fictional works about a character called Cynthia, soundtracks taken from the works of Proust, texts written by critics and interactive activities where you can recreate your own techno mix…

Cynthia, the CD-ROM's figurehead, really was a trainee at the Georges Pompidou Centre during this period, as being a character invented for the occasion. The character is more a pretext than a real heroine – she is the element that links all the sections together and creates a fictional fabric. Yet his attempt at fiction remains in an imaginary mode: Cynthia's private life is not revealed and this is not an attempt to make a documentary concerning her reality – she simply represents a pretext for navigating amongst the twenty or more sections available.

Alberto Sorbelli has chosen the codes of representation of the press (the review, the sections, the eponymous female character of the title…) and mixed them within an artistic universe that is ill assorted and anachronistic, based on quotations from Proust, a parody of Socratic dialogue and interactive sequences that exploit the technical possibilities of the CD-ROM.

It should be noted that after 1995, the date when Just from Cynthia was made, artistic reviews intended for another medium than paper are designed to be broadcast on Internet, with the CD-ROM becoming obsolete as an intermediary between artists and their public [1].

Laetitia Rouiller

[1] See either of the following sites: www.panoplie.org or www.synesthesie.com.