Jennifer Steinkamp: ACME ¥ Santa Monica, California
Alice sighed. “In my own world everything
would be different,” she whispered to Dinah.
The gallery door is unexpectedly closed. The darkened room allows for
the full impact of the wide expanse of colorful, whirling light upon the
viewer’s senses. There is a continual, unrelenting movement of nebulous
forms that eventually reveal a repetitive loop that runs about eight seconds.
The image ebbs, flows and swirls to the side bearing a resemblance to
wave action as seen from underneath the surface of the water. The rhythmic,
repetitive movement generating a feeling of deep space seduces the viewer
into its virtual, infinite depth.
And Alice jumps down the dark hole after the white rabbit.
Soon the door opens again and the viewer’s seduction is interrupted.
The focus is transported back to the gallery and the viewer becomes aware
of being in a dark, cavernous architectural space.
“Where are we going?” she shouted but the rabbit didn’t
answer.
There are two projections that form a continuous field across a major
part of the gallery wall. One image is projected in a horizontal format
from a projector in the front room. The other is the same image in a vertical
orientation on a translucent material from the back room where there once
was a door. The second image is visible from both the front and the back
rooms.
Saying this, the Caterpillar turned into a butterfly and flew away.
Eventually an enigmatic soundtrack slides into one’s awareness, though
what it is remains unclear. It moves in and out of consciousness, at times
becoming a subliminal element. In fact, both the soundtrack and the image
are generated from a combination of pre-recorded water and snowstorm patterns
that are available within the technology. These are then manipulated and
edited by the artist who collaborates with a sound composer.
“I’m tired of being only three inches high,” she said as
she bit off a piece of the mushroom.
Walking or standing figures block the light of the projector and a silhouette
is superimposed onto the image. Thus a presence of form is created through
the absence of light (and color) which is a reversal of the customary
relationship between form and color. A condition of interactivity between
the viewer and the work of art is created by the interruption of the image
in the form of the viewer.
“This is not a birthday party,” said the Mad Hatter. “This
an unbirthday party.”
One of Steinkamp’s objectives is to activate and destabilize the
often detached, monocular frame of reference of the viewing subject. The
traditional distancing and objectification of the experience of perception
is confounded by the dependence of the computerized image on the architecture
so that the viewer has a sense of being inside a space rather than outside
a focus of interest such as a work of art. This is one reason why the
physical nature of the space is one of the first elements that is considered
in making the work.
“That depends on where you want to go,” said the Cat who had
an odd way of disappearing and then reappearing again before Alice’s
eyes.
This shifting of the subjective viewing experience is exemplified when
in the back gallery the main door is opened causing a total annihilation
of the image. The illusion of depth and space that the viewer has been
engaged with abruptly yields itself to the flat wall of the gallery. There
is no trace whatsoever of the previous captivating image. The viewer experiences
a startling shift from projecting oneself into the space of a virtual
depth to the experience of being within the actual space of the gallery
architecture. The door closes, the architecture disappears and once again
the wall is transformed into a swirling kaleidoscope of color and space.
Their voices sounded very far away and they all seemed to be calling her
name: “Alice! Alice!”
Through the relationships between architecture, image, and the body, Steinkamp
effectively destabilizes the point of view in the viewing subject. She
often uses multiple perspectives within one image-space, so there are
multiple viewpoints from which the viewer sees the space: space as visual
(virtual) depth, space as surface and space as a physical interiority.
Similarly, as Alice engages in a surreal journey in which her customary
world is destabilized through transformations both in her own body and
her dream world, the viewer discovers an interactive and shifting position
within Steinkamp’s installation. Thus the artist’s intention
of activating the participation of the viewer is created, thereby establishing
an interactivity between the viewer and the work of art.
Note: Alice text comes from Walt Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland,
by Lewis Carrol; Mouse Works (New York, 1993). Caren Furbeyre
Los Angeles, California
1995