Set Apart

Description: Image is a video still

Set Apart is a three channel video installation 5 1/2 minutes in length. The work consists of three projectors placed side by side projecting onto a wall. The configuration implies a panoramic view. The work presented on this tape is a one channel composited version.

Set Apart uses three cameras mounted together with arithmetic precision to insure that the three video channels can create either a unified or fragmented scene. The complex editing process of three channels makes it possible to create the resistance and dissonance between the three perspectives, enabling the portrayal of the character's psychological fragmentation.

As the story continues, the viewer becomes aware of the fracturing of the environment - a breakdown of the character and her reality into three different perspectives. The use of three channels of video creates the illusion of a space that deconstructs as the three screens are no longer synchronized in time and space yet remain related in content.

In a subsequent scene, the character meanders along the beach. The focal plane of the three lens' are short so that, when far away, the woman appears in triplicate. Yet, as she makes her way closer to the three cameras, she begins to converge into a focused being. When she steps into the exact focal plane of the three lens', her parts snap into place. No longer fragmented, she examines the lens as if looking at her whole self in a mirror. She has sought and found her own center.

Through the three frames' union and separation, we are able to experience the character's thoughts expanding and recanting; her attention spread out into thousands of pieces. Eventually each scene comes back into focus and there is always relief. In the closing scene however, she is betrayed by the medium, laid out before us her brain unable to bring the three channels of video together into her stereographic image. Instead, the three frames move independently of each other, in rare moments and only through editing do her gestures align.

My medium is moving imagery. I work in both film and video to create site-specific installations, video installations and one channel experimental narratives. In my installations I have used the framework of projecting various channels of video, compiled and edited on computers, to create the illusion of natural and architectural spaces. Once the space is defined I create a story within its framework using unique forms of personal language or visual poems.

My work is a deeper look into what I care about most, the preservation of nature in a techno-centric society. I fear that as technology offers alternate worlds that are more and more hyperreal (through virtual reality, 3-d animation, and the Web) that experiencing nature through technology will become the norm. I'm interested in exploring our resulting estrangement from nature and the effects of this distancing on our psyche. My work explores the loss of nature, the memory of that loss and the disappearance of memory over time. –Artist statement