Description of the "Retrospectroscope" AKA "Whirling Disk" Installation
Apparatus Mixed Media, 1996

The "Retrospectroscope" apparatus was first constructed in 1996 funded in part by an award from the San Francisco Art Institute to celebrate their 125th anniversary. It was made using a single sheet of Plexiglas 5 ft. in diameter, and was mounted directly on a stand and illuminated from behind. As an optical device, its function was to create the illusion of movement utilizing large format still images.

A variation of the phenakistascope , and many other such devices, my apparatus represents the need to re-explore the synthesis of years of scientific discoveries that culminated in the cinema, as we know it today. As the phenakistascope established the "stroboscopic effect", this concept inspired me to use actual strobes, the intermittent element of which acted as a shutter.

The basic phenomena of the combined physics of kinetics frequency of light, velocity and persistence of vision constitute the piece on a material level. These elements converge to animate still images originally shot on film. The series of images are photographic transparencies either shot using the still camera to animate as the originator of the images, or used to re-photograph images originally shot on motion picture film using the analyst projector as a tool to harness the ephemeral image.

The "Retrospectroscope" is an homage to the imaginary forces that lie beyond the ability of language to define. The play of image and mythology of machine became instilled with the ephemeral presence of celluloid. The "Retrospectroscope" apparatus has gone through many incarnations, its presence belies the processes that have created it. As a paracinematic device, it traces an evolutionary trajectory, encircling the viewer in a procession of flickering fantasies of fragmented lyricism. This re-invention simulates the illusion of the analysis of motion to recall early mysteries of the quest for this very discovery now taken for granted.; the "Muses of Cinema" represented by the female figures on the disk, have emerged from a dark Neoclassical past. Streams of images revolve around, in an attempt to harness notions of a cinematic prehistory tracing past motions and gestures to burn their dance on the surface of the retinas.

The images were affixed to the Plexiglas sheet in a concentric fashion working in a series, one ring of images informing the next, creating five circles. The device allows the viewer to investigate the cyclical aspects of time in an elliptical fashion as well as the perceptual illusion. All of the rings of images consisted of black & white 4X5 transparencies that could be read from outer ring to inner ring or in the reverse direction. The surface of the disk becomes the matrix upon which various associations develop between consecutive rings, evoking myriad interpretations. Rhythmical cohesive segments were formed building up a series of codified metaphors that sought to tantalize and enchant while questioning the role of the image in our society today.

Currently, a shift in our perception has already been dissembled and fragmented through computer based technology in the ways in which spatial temporal realms are challenging our views about how space is constructed. I hope this installation as a whole provides a link to this evolving, perceptual trajectory.

In 1997, a 16mm black and white silent film was made using the " Whirling Disk" as source material, which has been shown at numerous festivals. This film is known as the "Retrospectroscope", and was described in the San Francisco Bay Guardian as "A spinning flashing UFO/roulette wheel of Athenian proportions."

Description of 3 Installations Produced at the Akademie Schloss Solitude:
Perpetual Chasm, Dissipation between here and Nowhere, & Trajectory

"Perpetual Chasm" was an installation that sought to create an illusion of an endless chasm/ tunnel integrating a formally similar cinematic architecture interwoven into the fabric of a hallway known as the "Hirshgang Oberer", which means in English "deer path". The "Hirschgang Oberer" used in the film "Awake, but Dreaming", was once again used as a set for this site specific installation. The curvature and length was so extreme that one could not see the back wall at the end of the hallway from the entrance.The space was a perfect environment for a giant, seemless rear screen to be installed in the middle of the hall, completely bisecting the space. In this fashion, the rear screen projection created an exacting mimicry of the archtectural space creating a simulated tunnel. The 16mm filmic image projected on the screen is an illusion in itself, and was produced by pouring large quantities of water onto a platform filmed in 1990 at an abandoned train station in Worchester, Massachusetts. The reflection of the metal girders from the ceiling formed on the water, creating a virtual chasm. The cinematic loop was still for several seconds, when suddenly a giant sized woman walked across the surface of the water destroying the illusion. She walked with a determined gait, which became an irregular, awkward, dance-like step; she stopped, continued to an unseen edge, then descended and disappeared. The original image was from a 16mm film (Come Closer) that I never had the funds to finish, but have been recycling bits and pieces from for several years. The whole loop was approximately 27 seconds in length, and repeated its red patterned image for one evening. It was also re-photographed using an analyst projector and hand processed in the darkroom at Solitude. A CD loop accompanied the imagery: footsteps walking on a creaky wooden floor, and the melody of an old music box with laughter, which rhythmically dissolves into a cacophony of echoes.

"Dissipation between Here and Nowhere" also incorporated a film and sound loop in a redefined space. A Victorian bathtub with white shower curtain became the sculptural surface upon which Tippi Hedron from "The Birds" was projected on. A red light illuminated the footed bathtub from underneath, and one could see a tiled floor affixed to the wall on the other side of the small room. With this piece I wanted to relocate the actress from the inside of the phone booth from "The Birds" and place her in a space where one cannot quite tell if she is luxuriating in ecstasy or being trapped in a realm of flickering frames. The sound of a projector reel and water running from a real shower added to the atmosphere of uncertainty. The cinematic image was re-photographed using an analyst projector, and by using repeating black frames; the rhythm was altered to create a masking effect that broke the original, continuous flow of images. An obvious association to the shower scene in Hitchcock’s "Psycho" was alluded to here, although without gratuitous violence.

"Trajectory" was a collaboration with Viennese composer Wolfgang Suppan. This installation was composed of film loops that were shown with sound during a live performance. There were two film projections arranged side by side, projecting images from an old newsreel that depicted people who were trying to prepare themselves and each other from the threat of a gas attack in England during the Second World War. They were both re-photographed onto film and hand processed. The third screen depicted found imagery from the 1939 World’s Fair of spectators seen in silhouette looking at fireworks. What might not be apparent from the documentation due to the low lighting is that an analyst projector, (the same projector that was used to generate all the film loops), projecting the third screen’s imagery, was also used to provide the source sound. A microphone was placed very close to the projector, and Wolfgang controlled it during the performance with a remote control box. The sound being received by the microphone was then processed live by Wolfgang using the computer to create myriad patterns that were transformed at times into a hissing gas-mask breath, then into a barrage of rapid machine gun reverberations that crackled. The third screen completed the metaphor for the spectacle of war viewed from another place, completely separated from the environment being affected; an environment of danger, pain and fear. At one point, newsreels were viewed from the comfortable place of the cinema before a feature film. At this point in time, the sensational spectacle of war has proliferated almost invisibly into our consciousness via satellite, television, the internet and other media sources. Death has become transformed and reduced into mere entertainment for the masses who view this spectacle of death in their easy chairs from a distance thousands of miles away from the site of destruction. This disparity was achieved by the juxtaposition of the other two loops, portraying the intimacy of people up close and frightened, and trying to survive in an atmosphere of crisis.