Video Sculpture

I attended the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art's Summer opening a couple nights ago. One exhibit that stood out was "Video Works, 1996- 2008" by the artist Peter Sarkisian, He was setup in the largest of the museum's galleries, necessary as each piece required as many as four or five video projectors. His art straddles both mediums of video and sculpture, as video is projected onto solid objects. To better understand this concept, a couple highlights included a simple tin bucket and another, a rectangular base, that video was projected onto creating the illusion that there was actual liquid in the bucket and a soft, fluffy pillow on the floor. Most impressive was a hung piece that was embossed, meaning the blank-white plastic "canvas" was molded three-dimensionally, with video projected onto it, illuminating a complicated "engine" or gears and various moving parts.

I enjoyed the exhibit, but couldn't help feeling envious and kicking myself for, once again, being a lazy artist and not following through. A few years ago when I was regularly making short films with varied levels of success, I moved into freelance videography, and coincidently, SMoCA was my first and only paying client. I worked on a couple internal promotional projects as well as two projects involving visiting international artists. Both were shown in the museum and one was even reported to have shown at the renowned Venice Bienale. Anyway, that got me thinking, "hey, why don't I make my OWN video art?" I immediately had a couple ideas off the top of my head. One I was reminded of the other night was a concept I had to shoot video of a person...okay to be specific, a woman...and to be more specific, a nude woman, if only to establish a foundation or integrity of a "classical nude figure" within the framework of a contemporary medium. I wanted to shoot the model from all sides and project the video onto a column with four projectors. Depending upon how it looked, I may decide to project onto a blank manikin for added realism. I still would like to do it someday, if only to see what it looked like. Another idea I had was to build a glass box, like a tall aquarium, with a fan at the bottom. I would add a few cups of a fine powder into the box, and the fan would swirl the powder around, or perhaps have a small smoke machine pump artificial "smoke" into the box. Then I would project video with the swirling particle mass acting as a screen, creating the illusion of a rough hologram. It seemed like a throwback to the early days of film, when filmmakers created magical tricks or illusions in real-time.