Temporal thresholds

I started to think about loops as a kind of temporal default for video installation and realised that this kind of unanchored immersive view of time might be a problem ie not in keeping with spatial threshold because the experience of space and time cannot be separated .  Being in and out of time is a threshold condition.

So I wanted to structure the work in time in a way that was also spatially congruent.

One solution is to divide the work into elements ( call them chapters) spaced apart by interludes.

Each interlude corresponds to a spatial experience in which one is aware of the screens, not as projected images but part of the space of the work.  It is a time for being in the space of the screens as say architectural elements.

The Chapters  contain the work itself, in which the screens function more conventionally as carriers for the projected moving images.

In this way the work moves forward both temporally and spatially, the visitor moving between spaces, in and out of interludes and chapters.

Screen as threshold

With the project  focused on liminality I have needed to consider how screen based installations (my preferred form of presentation) might work in this context.

Thinking of the screen as threshold is helpful – as an architectural element that separates private and public space etc.

In terms of media theory, I now realise that the intermedial gesture is a kind of dynamic  threshold condition, moving between being in a medium and the staging of a medium (outside).

In terms of ‘spectatorship’ the intermedial gesture maps on to a region between cinematic viewing (being in a medium) and structural film (staging of a medium).

These slides are from the research paper presentation

I am exploring a two screen configuration to explore this threshold condition.  This seems practical for the final show and defines a space between the screens which is not completely surrounded by screen and can be entered from a number of directions.

The following slide shows how the space infront of the screens can be activated by projecting a shadow from an object (what it is will depend on many factors) onto each screen A and B.  The effect of this would be to return the ‘visitor’ to the space around the object in which the screens become walls.

 

 

Screens – books and papers

Useful literature relating to screens..

Screen Tests- Why Do We Need an Archaeology of the Screen?

Screens_Viewing_Media_Installation_Art_0. (Contents)

Screen as threshold- the disorientating topographiesof surrealist film

Erkki_Huhtamo-Elements_of_Screenology