Passing Phases (1995-1999)
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Passing Phases is an interactive installation which aims to move beyond a standard one-to-one trigger-response interaction. Viewers exert a continual influence on the installation, shifting the emotional states it has set up as they move through the space. Passing Phases is also concerned with exploring the dialogue between the corporeal and the technological. The images are deliberately sensual, with many involving touch. Additionally, the installation takes on subtle emotional rhythms as the images shift from screen to screen.
The installation consists of a carpeted space surrounded by seven monitors placed on plinths of various heights. (Viewers are asked to remove their shoes before entering the installation to enhance the sensuality of the space.) The screens show gesturing images of body parts (hands, eyes, mouths, feet) in tandem and alone. The images are periodically overlaid with transparent ghost images which create impromptu tensions and new resonances within the installation. The interactive structures are designed in such a way as to encourage co-operative behaviour between the viewers, the system interpreting and responding to the combined movement of the viewers in the installation space.
As the controlling computer interprets the geometry of the viewers' pathways, and the distance between viewer and viewers, and viewer and the monitors, the rhythms of both the gestures and the relationship of one image to others change. The pauses, repetitions, abrupt shifts from screen to screen of the images generate continual shifts in the atmosphere of the installation space. At times the mood is contemplative, calm, relaxed. At other times it is more active, tense or excitable. As the viewers try to control the installation the installation itself it attempts to exert an influence on the responses of the viewers. Additionally, the movement of the people in the installation and their relation to the movement of the images creates an informal choreography which can be observed when standing outside the installation space. This problematises ideas of the viewer`and`the viewed, the performer and the audience, the leader and the led.