The video installation mm by the artist duo known as Soft Turns creates a video trompe l’oeil using two video projections on opposing walls of the main gallery at Optica. Sound effects suggest dripping water, and reverberations suggest the empty corridors and subway platforms that appear on the walls. The perspective is that of a camera traveling through a mysterious subterranean structure.
The first impression is of a vast network of empty spaces. As the videos play out the appearance of rising water suggests the images were electronically manipulated. The reflection of the water doesn’t look …normal. As the videos continue to play and loop a realisation develops that the scene portrayed is a maquette. The video’s stop motion creates a further illusion of movement in a series of subway corridors.
“They are made not as direct replicas of actual places…these spaces are presented in situations which often fall just outside of physical reality…Each becomes a non-place, an illusion, a gap between the real and what appears to be its modelled double.”
-Gorlitz. S and W. Olejnik. “mm”, Artist Statement, March 2008
Audio effects and opposing walls create an architecture within the gallery space, redefining the experience of it. As both projections change over time, the faint audio cues suggest additional changes that might or might not be visible. When video images happen to synchronises creating mirror images the experience becomes especially disturbing because it reinforces the sense of being in narrow hall way. Rising water appearing in the corridors adds to the often claustrophobic response- despite the the open volume of the gallery.
“mm” raises issues of virtuality in architecture as electronic simulcra become increasingly difficult to differentiate from “bricks and mortar” constructions. A sense of disorientation-la nausée?- accompanies this installation. The question of how these 21st century constructions will affect our culture through our Pleistocene senses and instincts is raised but only minutely answered by this affecting installation.
“mm” at Gallerie Optica 372 Ste-Catherine O suite 508, Montréal
references
until April 19, 2008
State of Play Virtual Architecture 1.0:
Terra Nova:Virtual Architecture
CARVING SPACE: RESPONSIVE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURE TOOLS GO OPEN SOURCE
Two new essays about virtual architectureDesigning Virtual Architecture (2000)
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