Collin Bradford and Professor Peter Everett, Visual Arts
As citizens of contemporary Western culture, we have inherited a set of ideas about the nature of human life. A large part of our understanding of the world is based in the ideas of the Modern era. Though the majority of the populace may be unaware of the influence that the past has on our contemporary lives we cannot escape our modernist heritage. A large part of the worldview that we inherited is the linearity of time. There is an interesting contradiction between modernism’s linear time and the Cartesian idea of God as the master clockmaker. A clock functions based on repetitive, concentric (the second within the minute within the hour…), cyclical motion, though it helps us maintain our supposed control over our linear lives.
But how conscious are we of the concentric cycles we live: the annual trip around the sun, the lunar cycles, the cycle of the 7 day week, daily routine, meals and digestion, footsteps, breathing, hearts beating? People around us live at different paces, though everybody must live within the structure of these cycles.
My ideas have evolved since I wrote the proposal for the ORCA scholarship. I bought a digital video camera and found ways and places to do editing, and I took a class to learn the basics of video production. I found that my approach to video, a time-based medium, seemed rooted in music, another area in which something seemingly linear is composed of smaller cycles.
The piece described in my proposal1 is currently in progress, though modified to address my thoughts on the interplay between linear and cyclical time perception. Working with digital video, I have learned more about the medium and the potential ways to explore my ideas through it. Previously I was very interested in the movement of images from screen to screen, though now I see more potential in the interaction between the images on different screens at the same time, something Shirin Neshat, Bill Viola, and other video artists have explored in their video installations, or a combination of the two; interacting images “dancing” around each other, moving between screens.
The piece will be installed in Gallery 303 in the Harris Fine Arts Center during the last two weeks of January of 2003.2
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1 “an installation using large projection screens and digital video feeds. The screens will show images representing some of the different realities and forces we experience in life, specifically those related to the pace of life. The representation of each reality or force will not stay permanently on one screen, but will move between screens. The images representing each reality or force will move among the screens so there is a kind of weaving among the images. The video stream will be manipulated to distort the perception of the conflicting forces…. The piece will use three or four screens surrounding the viewer so no more than two screens are visible at once. The viewers will have to make a conscious decision about which screen will receive their attention. As the imagery on the screens changes, the viewers will have to constantly reevaluate what kind of images they want to see, and consequently, which screen they want to watch.”
2 I am indebted to Peter Everett for listening to my babble and responding to it, for exposing me to new ideas and possibilities, and for working with me to get through the bureaucratic mess of acquiring the necessary equipment for the piece.