"I wanted to have it make me dumber."
-Ethan Jackson
Such an interesting quote from Ethan Jackson about his relationship to building temporary camera obscuras. I wonder what it is about the process, maybe it's because of the simplistic qualities. Jackson's installation was about experience, temporal space, and kind of a naive play. He spoke about his interests in "turning the outside in," or being able to project in a way that disorients the viewer. This concept or research question is similar to what we've been grappling with as far as the films we've seen this semester. I'm kind of a performance artist geek, so I couldn't help but think of this as an element of performance, maybe a setting in which one can play. In real time. I think he showed us pictures of a room in which he set up three "walls" (I can't remember if they were sheets....anywho, it doesn't matter) where the images were projected. The most interesting thing about this setting, kind of lens, light play, was that he included a stool. A symbol or a point in the lanscape that connected us to reality. I asked whether or not that the placement of a stool in this setting was intentional, and he elaborated on its main purpose; to convey proportion and scale...something to gauge the size of the projection. The stool to me sparked ideas of performance and play, how could the projection of real time be played with, and how would we, like he said "viscerally react" to its movements. What kind of world do we want to see play out against our real time screen?
1 comment:
i found his work to be quite interesting aswell. To bad he wasnt able to set up a more elaborate piece in milwaukee like he had done at the ones he showed us in his film. still amazing though
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