User:Hunterlonge

[noindex]

‘Open Screen Unit’

On the floor sits the outline of an eight sided incomplete cube comprised of 2.5cm metal tubing and stands 135cm. Its form recalls Marcel Breuer’s ‘Cesca’ chair. A thin mesh fabric is draped over this frame. The mesh has a 2mm grid and from a distance, looks translucent. The mesh covers 3 sides, front, top and back. A piece of equally sized backlit film is sewn to the backside. This side of cube has a video of the mesh itself projected onto it. The sculpture is positioned at the exact distance from the projector so that the video’s pixels are the same size as the mesh. A soft black line is overlaid in the video, leaving what looks like a shadow of the frame.

The piece was constructed of metal tubing that had been bent to form eight vertices of a cube, creating a standing frame. A conduit bender was used to make the corners round. Mesh fabric the width of the form was laid over the frame, hence covering 3 sides, front top and back. On the backside, a piece of rear-projection film was sewn onto the mesh making that face of the cube a screen. A video was recorded of the mesh fabric gently moving in the light. In post-production, the video was masked to the size of the square screen and a soft black line the thickness of the metal tubing was overlaid. Once the projector was mounted, the sculpture was moved to the exact distance at which the pixels in the video where the same size of the grid of the mesh.

It is self-reflexive and a study on the properties of video and video/light projection, the screen and the physicality of this medium. Because the resolution of the projection is roughly equal to that of the plastic mesh, from certain positions the piece has a multiplied even squared resolution allowing for perspective-altered interference patterns. Matthew Draving and I were interested in the possibility of a unit being both considered a whole and a constituent of a whole, seemingly at once closed and open or complete and incomplete. This tied in to the concept of a surface, a pixel, a matrix, a sculpture and became open ended.

Salon piece, untitled

On one side of a white pillar in the center of the gallery, There is a painting which is a first hardly visible. Upon closer inspection, one sees a transparent blue gel or paint has been gutturally applied to the surface itself. It is roughly 2 meters tall starting 20cm above the floor and ending 20cm below the ceiling. Up close the viewer smells some combo of shitty perfume and shampoo. It is soon deduced that this is just hair gel smeared on the pillar, a hair gel wall painting.

This piece was created with Vianney Fivel. We masked off the top and bottom 20cm of the pillar and then covered it with translucent blue hair gel, smearing it directly on with our hands.

We were invited to take part in an exhibition in Geneva called Electric Fields. Initially the organizers had invited a hair stylist to set up a salon for one day. This was cancelled, yet remained in the schedule of events, so Vianney and I proposed to alter the exhibition by making adjustments to the installation and by adding elements from a hair salon setting that would respond to the work in the exhibition.

'Sisyphus'

Sisyphus is a grainy standard definition video shown on a small monitor. The camera shakily follows a person down a frozen pathway at night seemingly in a park. The person in a hooded coat approaches a lamppost on his left and kicks it very hard. The light is instantly out and the frame is dark. You hear the crunching of footsteps on the ice and a few moments later the individual approaches another lamp. On the second kick it is out and pitch black except a red light. Under a minute later, the lamp flickers back on and the camera is passed from the filmer to the kicker as they both try to kick out the lamp again and fail.

This video was made with Tilman Hatje on a December night in Leipzig in a public park. We walked through the park and filmed each other kicking lampposts. When kicked properly, the light go out and flicker back on within a few minutes. A small point and shoot digital camera was used to record the video, it was later edited to look like one continues shot just over 2 minutes long.

The video was created during a workshop at HGB Leipzig, which had the theme “Night.” We wanted to make something simple and short recalling a sort of adolescent rebellion inspired by boredom. The title clarifies that the action is futile, repeated by each generation, a rebellious act that never brings about a long-term change, only a temporary thrill.