Pneumenon

Pneumenon (a two-channel video installation) was commissioned and exhibited by the Fabric Workshop and Museum. It is a two-channel video installation that offers dramatic visible metaphors for ideas about appearance and reality, sign and referent, cause and effect. The heart of the piece is a video shot on the Rio Grande in southern Texas. A blue tarpaulin hangs from a line of rope and sways in an intermittent breeze. The shadows from the leaves on a tree in the distance are projected onto this surface by the sun, and they grow and decline in size as the tarp sways back and forth towards the camera.When the wind occasionally lifts the tarp, the entire landscape behind is revealed- a tree, some RV vehicles, a road. And then the curtain falls again, fluttering.This image is projected from behind onto a large silk screen that hangs in front of the viewing audience. A small fan is positioned in front of this screen and has been slaved to the chapter numbers in the DVD so that it goes on and off on a pre-programmed basis. When it does so, the projection screen itself (onto which the image of the tarp is being thrown) rises in a complex furl and reveals a hitherto unseen image projected on the back wall of the space. This is a piece about phenomenon and noumenon, about air, wind, breath, and light, and it operates at an odd juncture between video art and a theatre of objects.

Author: 

Year: 

2003

Country: 

United States
Technical data

Original format: 

Installation

Colour: 

Colour

Sound: 

Sound

Length: 

5 minutes

Other info: 

two-channel video installation

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