Monday, October 4, 2010

Before the Sun

As I entered midway I was fairly cautious, were we supposed to walk into the pitch black room ahead? Or was the gallery somewhere else? As we entered it took a few minutes for my eyes to fully adjust to the rapid change in lighting. There was a mound made out of packed dirt, formed into steps in the middle of the room that had two film projectors in glass pillars facing in opposite directions placed on top. Each of the two videos were projected onto two corners of the room, not on the flat walls, with the film strip going up into the ceiling through a grid of strings and back into the projectors. The videos were of people walking around native burial grounds, at sun set and sun rise. Though the mounds were not easily distinguishable in the videos. The mound in the center of the room was meant to symbolize what was being shown in the films, and was pointed to orient with north, south, east, and west. The whole room had a very dank cool and dark atmosphere. Everything seemed to have a stark contrast to the glass pillars, which I can only assume was intentional.

One thing that confused me about the videos was that on the sun set video when it changed clips there was a quick flash of green, instead of a smooth transition. This was the same for the sun rise, except it showed blue. Interestingly enough the aspect of the show that interested me the most was the program, it seems very cohesive to have the program be a vinyl record. This definitely goes well with the film that was being projected and brings together a whole analog theme. I can't help but wonder what it would have been like to have the record playing through speakers in conjunction with the films.

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