Beyond Black Box
With this performance-based video-work I explore interactions between body movement, space motion and moving image. I want to show a space where human exercises and spatial transformation act on each other reciprocally.
Therefore I set up an interface space: the Black Box. A black cube, painted into a corner of a room, about the size of a man with streched arms. This black cube itself plays with the experience of dimensionalities: From afar it appears like a spatial object, but there are just painted planes, exposed to be entered.
In the context of an exhibition over 3 days I invited people to explore the Black Box. I created a setting of passage around it: The visitors had to get out of their shoes - the black is so sensitive - and to put on white overalls to remain visible and for the impression of being in a protective suit while investigating an unknown zone.
The Black Box serves as transit room into virtuality wherein the visitors were recorded on video. I explicitly asked the visitors to express with their bodies what they long for in this black virtual space and to reach for whatever to interact with. The explorers showed a playful delight for performance.
The recorded performances provide the basic material for motion studies in motion graphics. I handle it in an abstract geometrical way and let the movements of the performers make themselves move through the virtual space. Each motion box is moving with its own motion time through image space. But the boxes themselves also activate each other and so on.
The viewers of these continuously floating videos shall also get in motion. Accordingly I will build a floating box which provides displays on each side to evoke the appearance that inside this box there are hovering all the recorded performances, showing up here and there. The observers will move around to follow the spheres they feel drawn to.
