Here, Everything Is Still Floating, 2008-2010

single channel video, 8 minutes, 10 seconds

An apparition of a white bird carefully moves through a textured, black landscape, listening, watching and aware of being watched. This meditative piece visually references Japanese screen and sliding door paintings of cranes, an elusive creature long associated with notions of immortality and resurrection as well as the ability to transcend the three realms: heaven, earth and the underworld. The refracted doubling of the bird suggests the idea of transience, revealing a creature at once restless and at rest. A haunting and minimal audio score comprised of natural sounds, electronic music and Japanese shamisen accompanies this sparse image.

Although a single projection, this work gives the illusion of emanating from multiple sources. This is achieved by projecting through glass fragments and prisms, which cause the image to appear in multiple places simultaneously, at times overlapping one another. The superimposition of refracted images pushes the use of video into a sculptural sphere by creating an almost 3-dimensional, voluminous quality. The prisms cause the video to appear distorted, holographic and ghostly in its various repetitions, unleashing the image from the typical, contained video rectangle. Using this projection method sets the image adrift from its technological source, at once frustrating and engaging viewers’ perceptions of sight and sound.