ABOUT THE SERIES
Impressions is a series of projection works that utilize shadow as a tool of two-dimensional compression (capture) and decompression (playback) to explore the capabilities and limitations of video to reconstitute portions of perceived reality.
Yeah, I made shadow puppets at MIT.
REVISITING the HISTORY of FILM
Because augmented / composite reality came about so long after film was invented, the emergent medium has missed out on themes explored by early moving images. Many of the first film strips explored the basic mechanics recording on film, including maintaining or choosing to divert from the continuity of time, scale, and space. Some forget that before the Lumiรจre brothers introduced deception into film, most videographers and indeed the inventors of the underlying technology went to extreme lengths to recreate reality as accurately as possible. Impressions revisits this loyalty to reality, working from a standpoint that video content must be fully integrated and imbedded into the environment first, by default, and as convincingly as possible.
From this grounded standpoint of augmented / mixed reality, Impressions revisits the early mechanical deviations that would mature into the language of film โ cuts, zooms, slow motion/time-lapse, and compositing โ to find that they are extremely jarring and undermine our expectations of reality.
When the virtual is grounded in reality, disbelief must not be suspended as is customary when entering a theater or turning on a television or mobile. In reality belief is the default. Seeing is believing, at least for now.
WORKS IN SERIES
Screen 1, 2015
4 x 3 x 1 ft (122 x 92 x 31 cm)
Also known as Registration Plane after the work's first iteration.
Box 1, 2015
2 x 2 x 4 ft (61 x 61 x 122 cm)
Also known as Test Box I.
Room 1 , 2015
8 x 8 x 12 ft (2.4 x 2.4 x 3.7 m)
Also known as Test Room I.
Stadium 1 , 2016
166 x 280 x 312 ft (x m)
A largest-scale demonstration of the effects explored within the series applied to the Houston Astrodome.