User:Ruben/TP1/McCall

Screen time - it’s a common term to describe the duration of a film or video. But in McCall’s video projections, there is no place for it.

First of all, the fact that his work is not (primarily) about the screen projection. Rather, McCall uses the light to sculpt in the air. It is a strange sensation: the feeling that you seem able to touch the light. You can walk around (and through) his work, marveling at the shapes. It’s not without reason that McCall calls his works, „sculptures of solid light” of which the patterns on the screen form merely the „footprint”.

Secondly, and probably even more important, the word ‚screen time’ doesn’t fit McCalls work because they have no specific duration. That is, the works have no other duration than art works hanging on the walls of a gallery. You can enjoy them as long as the opening hours of the gallery allow for it, or as short as a glimpse of an eye, when you pass by them.

McCall’s first works used to have a fixed run time, but by increasing the duration of his works he turned his audience into individual spectators. Just as one won’t watch Andy Warhol’s eight hour film ‚Empire’ (1964) from beginning until the end, one is not inclined to do that with the work of McCall. Even though McCall calls looping a „lazy solution” to last a film all day, his use of „cycles” form an integral part of the work’s structure. The recurring cycles become part of the sculpture, and give the work an infinite duration.

As with installations in general, this timelessness seems to be embedded in my interactive work as well. For example, the Spectacular Times keeps going as long as it is turned on. Its image is never finished, but as McCall puts it: „a transisting object is always complete.” The fact that is is never finished, and it is transiting toward another state can tell a lot about the work’s meaning. It therefore struck me that McCall, when asked how he comes to his shapes, somewhat evaded the question. Only later in the QA suggesting that the choice of shapes comes from „a feeling”.

I find it interesting that in his work, he tries to marvel the individual spectator. To me, that seems to be happening more and more in the filmic media. Not only do we watch more often on our own devices. Even at the cinema we barricade ourselves from others with dark 3D-glasses. This individualization will go even further with the introduction of devices like the Oculus Rift. Even though my films are, as most films „not site specific”, they can be made „site sensitive”. Having a single viewer instead of an audience allows for another experience. For example, a first person film might prove interesting, or even introduce some interaction. Wether this interaction is conscious (using a user interface) or unconscious (ie. by processing the viewer’s stress levels).

This development will blur the lines between film, video installation and possibly games as well. I believe this area of interaction will form an interesting field of developments in the coming years.