My first attempt at a multi-channel video installation. The work was highly influenced by Nam June Paik’s retrospective at the Whitney and by Steina Vasulka’s “The West”. This piece was produced while I was living and working at the Vasulka’s House/Studio in Santa Fe. I had persuaded them to let me house sit while they spent six months in Japan. Access to their equipment, particularly to 4 adjacent monitors and four ¾” video decks, was what made it possible to compose a multi image work. “Virtual Space” was originally an eight channel work, mounted as two 2X2 stacks of monitors facing each other across a narrow space. Standing in the middle, the viewer had to look back and forth between the two sides. One side (L) is an assembly of footage gathered at the Lightning Field (a land art project in southern New Mexico by artist Walter Di Maria.) The other side (V) features four views of the interior of the Vasulka’s live/work interior as a handheld camera slowly and continuously pans across interior surfaces in the space. Subsequently, each of the 2x2 grids of images composing the two sides (L&V) was transferred to a single tape. These are represented here as LX4 and Vx4.
Demo version of my first attempt at a multi-channel video installation. The work was highly influenced by Nam June Paik’s retrospective at the Whitney and by Steina Vasulka’s “The West”. This piece was produced while I was living and working at the Vasulka’s House/Studio in Santa Fe. I had persuaded them to let me house sit while they spent six months in Japan. Access to their equipment, particularly to 4 adjacent monitors and four ¾” video decks, was what made it possible to compose a multi image work. “Virtual Space” was originally an eight channel work, mounted as two 2X2 stacks of monitors facing each other across a narrow space. Standing in the middle, the viewer had to look back and forth between the two sides. One side (L) is an assembly of footage gathered at the Lightning Field (a land art project in southern New Mexico by artist Walter Di Maria.) The other side (V) features four views of the interior of the Vasulka’s live/work interior as a handheld camera slowly and continuously pans across interior surfaces in the space.