I WISH YOU WOULDN’T LINGER
2019Three-Channel Media and Sculpture Installation with Dual Digitally Projection-Mapped Abstract Animations, Audio, Wood, Paint and Organza Fabric, 25:00 (loop), Overall Dimensions Variable. Made for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA Show 2019, Chicago, IL.
Consisting of two abstract animations -- motion graphics digitally projection-mapped onto sculptural forms -- I Wish You Wouldn’t Linger was developed as my thesis work toward the completion of requirements for a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The work was made entirely on-site, specific to this installation.
In one corner of a dark room, a fabric box measuring one cubic foot made only with sewn organza--no armature -- has been suspended. The first animation is projection-mapped onto this box. As the projected image passes through the box, it casts a shadow on the wall behind. The relationship between image and material shifts constantly. With higher levels of brightness, the box appears more opaque, solid. It’s pronounced shadow protrudes from the wall, seeming more like an object rather than an image.
During more blue, and subsequently dimmer, sections of the animation, the box is translucent, barely catching the light. It’s soft shadow lets the image register more clearly on the wall. At certain points, it seems to recede into the wall -- a cubby hole in the corner.
Within the animation, the box first is filled with a simple white light. Slowly, fuzzy horizontal lines fade in, rolling upward. The stripes become faint bands of warm coral, pink and fuschia tones, still with white. These bands then empty downward, concentrating themselves
into a baseline level of bright gold, with the upper portion of the box very dark blue-violet. Gradually, the viscous undulating gold rises, filling the volume of the box. Before it reaches the top, it pauses and, just as slowly, recedes. As the gold melts, drains and empties the volume, a gentle flutter arises. Rounded squarish shapes, layered translucent, expand and contract. Breathing, blurring, the amorphous shape moves around all sides of the box, inhabiting it. It goes from being caught on the frontal surface to resting inside, against the back edge.
In the opposite corner of the room, a second animation is projection-mapped onto a carved and painted 7ft long pinewood 2x4.
Spanning half the length of the wall and resting on the floor, the sculpture acts as a baseboard, of sorts. Its corresponding animation is a simple white light whose shape traces the sculpture’s form. Digitally projected LCD light is refracted upon the white walls, sculpture and semi-polished concrete floor, creating red-magenta and green-cyan tones along the edges of the white light.
Beginning at the wall’s center point, where it meets the tapered tip of the baseboard sculpture, a small dot of white light gently fades into visibility. Creeping, it stretches up the sculpture’s angled edge. Now a thin stripe, the white band expands toward the right hand wall, filling the sculpture with bright white light. As soon as it touches the wall, though, the light starts to recede into the floor. Gradually emptying
itself into the crevasse, only the thinnest of lines will remain. Now, the light seems to be spilling out -- escaping from some imagined adjacent brightly lit room through a crack under the wall. Almost imperceptibly, then, while the sculpture remains dark, the floor below and wall above begin to glow. The halo increases until the black baseboard seems to recede backward while the bright surrounding floor and wall jump
forward. Then, slowly, the two elements reverse. The wall and floor fade to darkness while the baseboard becomes completely illuminated. It is now so bright, that it appears to be emitting light -- the source rather than the reflector. Finally, the light recedes toward its right, disappearing into the corner. In much the same motion as it was filled by that initial band of light at the start, it fades to black.
ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION:
