in/e/gress
1. Description of the work
in/e/gress is a 3 metre wide, 2 metre high plastic-strip curtain, modeled on the flexible cool-room door used in supermarkets, liquor stores, morgues and hospitals. It is supported by a de-mountable frame or, where possible, hung from the internal structure of a pre-existing architectural space. The plastic has been lightly sanded on one side, retaining its transparency to daylight but giving it enough opacity to capture projected video imagery at night.
The methodology for executing the work is as follows. During the day, a video camera records any movement of people (and air) through the plastic-strips. Audio recordings of ambient sounds are made at the same time. At night, the video recording is projected back onto the curtain/screen and the digitally manipulated audio recordings are played through speakers whose positions vary according to the work's shifting locations. A red LED message affixed to the top horizontal bar scrolls the words "ingress" and "egress". During the night-time projection period, another recording session is possible, so that the temporal collision of human passage through the curtain in two different time-frames can then be projected back onto the curtain, complicating its fluid surface even further.
2. Conceptual explanation
in/e/gress is a live interactive audio-visual installation - a morphing of doorway and screen. It works with notions of passage and portal - interstitial spaces in and through which the temporal dimension is made the subject of a digital play. The work acts primarily as a register of human passage in different time frames, whilst simultaneously reflecting glimpses of the landscape in which it is temporarily located. Its form and methodology compel it to continually reposition itself, so that it 'frames' a view of the world that is in a state of perpetual flux, making it a visual and aural repository of shifting grounds and times that inscribe and interweave themselves onto its surface and into its structure. in/e/gress is a fluid form of post-modern trompe-l'oeil which operates to subtley shift and amplify 'the real'.
3. History and future prospects
in/e/gress was commissioned from cAVity in October 2003 by X-events for the National Review of Live Art (Midland), where it was mounted on the internal steel structure of the Old Midland Railway Workshops. It has since been modified to be free-standing, for installation in the following WA sites:
o at the water's edge on Geraldton's Town Beach for subsidium, an exhibition of site-specific works addressing the coast;
o at the entrance to The Out There Film Festival (Geraldton);
o at the top of an external staircase leading into The Maritime Museum, Fremantle, for the ECU conference: On The Beach: Interdisciplinary Encounters.
in/e/gress is scheduled to be shown at the Next Wave Festival in Melbourne in May 2004, in Titanik Gallery in Turku, Finland in August 2004 and at Sydney's Performance Space in January 2005.
4. Further adaptations
cAVity are currently seeking funding assistance to further refine in/e/gress and to present and promote it at a number of interstate and overseas venues and events in 2005. The two main refrabrication options currently being investigated are: o making a free-standing framework out of demountable aluminium components which house the audio elements and the electronic signage or o housing electronic components inside a number of prefabricated aluminium cylinders that mirror the dimensions of scaffolding, and simply clamping those components onto scaffolding hired at each new site. Either option will produce a versatile, integrated and portable new media installation.
