HERE
THERE
NOW
THEN
HERE THEN and NOW
(Document of LCGA show)
Interactive video installation
2006
Camera, computer, plasma screen
The installation is placed in the existing Picture Gallery of LCGA. The screen is inserted into the gallery as another picture. The computer programme mixes a stream of moving images, previously recorded in the space, with live video coming directly from the same camera. The mix of live and pre-recorded video is controlled by the presence of the visitor. Approaching the camera/screen moves the fader towards live, while standing still or moving away moves the slider towards pre-recorded events. The visitor is constantly challenged to verify what is happening on the screen with what is happening in the space where he or she is standing.
HERE
(Document of LCGA show)
Interactive video installation
2006
Camera, computer, projector, IR lamps, amplifier, speakers
A dark mausoleum-like space is lit only by infrared light rendering it visible to the camera. Live video from the camera is passed through a programme that filters only changing pixels. The abstracted movement produced is then processed over several frames to give it a viscous quality. This generates a live projection where movement emerges from a flat grey plane like a living sculptural relief. The sound of a crowded room with a piano playing in the background, increasing in intensity when there is more activity, and fading away as activity decreases, articulates stillness and movement in the space.
THERE and THEN
(Extract)
2-channel Video Installation. 2006
2 projectors, 2 screens, amplifier, speakers
In September 2005 we spent two weeks in a tiny apartment in Yokohama, Japan, accompanied by our twin five year old girls, preparing an installation about a piano performance by our Japanese friend, Eriko Momotani. We spent most of our day in the air conditioned flat, escaping the heat and humidity outside while Eriko practiced piano and the children played, seizing the piano any time Eriko was away from it. This film is about those piano sessions in that small world in a city on the other side of the globe at the end of the summer 2005. The installation, discrete visually, also creates the sound environment that subtly invades the whole Here There Now Then exhibition, complimented by the randomly generated piano notes emanating from the interactive installations.
HERE and THERE
(Document of LCGA show)
Interactive video installation
2006
Camera, computer, projector, amplifier, speakers
A computer program polarises and delays video data coming from the camera, generating a projection made up of negative and positive strata. Both camera and projector are focused on the same projection space creating a closed circuit between captured and projected image. A visitor's silhouette introduced into this circuit passes slowly through successive planes of black and white. Generated by any movement or its projected resonance, a stream of piano notes articulates rhythms.
NOW
(Document of LCGA show)
Interactive video installation
2006
Camera, computer, projector, amplifier, speakers
The installation at rest appears as a projected rectangle of monochrome colour. The visitor’s outline, captured by camera, is translated by the computer programme into a series of drawing-like forms in the field of colour. The visitor’s movements influence the colour of the projection, pushing it through the whole spectral cycle. The same movements generate a live stream of piano notes, modulating the transformations of drawn forms and articulating the intensity of the movements of the visitor.
In a variation used for the dance performance by John Hurley and Laura Murphy, the movements of the dancers generate more volatile reverberations in the field of colour.
NOW and THEN
(Document of LCGA show)
Interactive video installation
2006
Camera, computer, projector, amplifier, speakers
Live video from the camera is passed through a programme separating the three streams of coloured light that make up the video image: red, green and blue. The blue stream passes through unchanged, while the green and red stream are processed through a time delay. The delay on the green stream changes cyclically between 0 and 75 frames, and on the red stream between 0 and 150 frames. The cycles run parallel so that the three streams coincide at 0 and then diverge. Anything in the space that does not move appears as full colour video, while moving things are separated into three streams of colour, receding from the present.
Loss of understanding of time can lead to confusion in our understanding of space and vice versa. The installation Here Then and Now demonstrates this phenomenon ingeniously. The screen mixes live video (from a camera fixed on the visitor) with images from the same camera, previously recorded. After a short while, our spatio-temporal landscape becomes blurred and we can no longer tell the real from the virtual. A conflict occurs between perception and logic, and the mind no longer knows whether to believe the senses or the intellect. Similar to the more common phenomenon of visual illusion, in this case the time-based illusion is a source of information on how our brain interprets and rationalises both endogenous and exogenous data.
The process of assimilating two sets of contradictory information does take place, but sometimes to the detriment of reliable information, undermining our solid capacities of perception. The mind seems to prefer a subjective but erroneous interpretation that is reassuring, to an objective observation that is confusing. An exterior reference point, no longer actual, supplants the gauge given by awareness of our own movements. The spectator is hoodwinked by his own perception, which insists on integrating contradictory information, and can no longer distinguish the real from the virtual.
Thi Bich Doan. Past and Presence. Gandon Editions 2007
