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Concept
Abstract
In the Urban Corridor we construct a manageable space to reenact the randomness of human experience and the process of exchange of information that occurs in everyday life. The piece becomes independent of the authors and the participants become the active creators of the experience. This installation is a collage of video projections and sound compositions that elicit the feel of the urban environment. A series of constantly repeating sounds serve as a sensory ground. Other independent sounds are triggered by the participants and are randomly selected by a computer to create a cacophony. The combination of images and sounds resembles daily (urban) experience both in its dense texture and in its unpredictability.
Concept
The urban corridor was developed as part of our ongoing investigation into the role of the artist in relationship to urbanism, globalization, information exchange and media coverage. This video-installation explores the power of the individual to influence the media and the city through art. Urban Corridor comes alive when the visitors enter the installation. The recreation of an urban space in an unpredictable setting affects the audience's perception of the piece. Each visitor has a unique experience inside the corridor.In the information and globalization era, with the development of technologies of mass diffusion, the media has become an instrument of power and control. The media is concentrated in the urban environment and could not exist outside of this physical space. The space of the urban corridor mirrors this urban space and enables us to critique the universal centers of creation and diffusion of art and information. To us, as Latin Americans, this subverting potential is essential to negotiate among diverging realities. A corridor, "a long, narrow, densely populated area" serves as a visual metaphor for the city's synekism. Our corridor is populated by sounds and images replicating the cacophony of news and in-formation within the urban environment. In it, people, news, and art, travel and interact along place and time variables.There are infinite cross-points in the city. We will focus on the power of the media to shape the perception of reality and effectively impact the course of events. The media is a multinational entity concentrated in a few metropolitan points. The individual can still exert power over the media and the city because of the co-dependent nature of the relationship that ties the three. Art becomes the tool of the individual to transform this interaction. Visitors are an essential part of this installation since it is the body that activates the space.
Project Description
This installation is a collage of a video projection with sound compositions. The sounds elicit images of the urban environment. There is a soundtrack for the video and several sets of independent sounds which are triggered by the visitors. These sounds are connected to a computer with two CDroms that are randomly activated. There is another set of environmental sounds coming from a CD player which constantly play.The video interweaves four "news" events: an automobile accident, a public demonstration, urban sprawl, and a war. These events are designed to encompass the audience perception from a global (i.e. a war) to an individual experience (i.e. car wreck). The news exposes the process by which real occurrences become a mediated reality. The video utilizes a combination of found, original footage and voice-overs.We create a virtual cityscape with a large video projection and surround sound which envelope the viewer. This is an interactive piece. As the participant enters the room, he/she triggers the video projection and audio sound. As people walks around the room, they turn on various motion detectors which trigger random sounds. The projector is placed two feet from the ground, 4.5 meters away from the projection wall. The visitors must travel around the scrim walls to the point of the corridor opposite the entrance before they can view the back projection. The space constraints and the limited visibility put the visitor in a state of expectation and thus help to create a complete (and intense) phenomenological experience.
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