Be Now Here

Source: Michael Naimark, Triptych

Michael Naimark

Be Now Here ,
Co-workers & Funding
Produced by
Interval Research Corporation, Palo Alto
with the cooperation of
The UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Paris
Documents
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  • »Be now here«, 1995 – 2002(Installationsansicht)
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  • Viewer wears 3D glasses and views a large immersive screen. The child is in Timbuktu, Mali.
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  • "Opera glass" style polarized glasses
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  • The top of the input pedestal
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Description
Be Now Here is an installation about landscape and public places. Visitors gain a strong sense of place by wearing 3-D glasses and stepping into an immersive virtual environment. The imagery is of public plazas on the UNESCO World Heritage Centre's list of endangered places - Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Timbuktu, and Angkor, Cambodia - places both exotic and disturbing. The style is ambient, as if the imagery is live.

For production, a unique recording system was built consisting of two 35mm motion-picture cameras (for 3D, one for each eye) mounted on a rotating tripod. The installation consists of an input pedestal for interactively choosing place and time, a stereoscopic projection screen, four-channel audio, and a 16-foot rotating floor on which the viewers stand.

Be Now Here is an extension of several media trajectories. One is of enhanced cinematic representation, such as the Imax-sized projections of the Lumiere brothers in 1900 and the 3-screen triptychs of Abel Gance’s Napoleon in 1927. Another is of non-narrative cultural activism, such as the films of Godfrey Reggio and Tony Gatlif. But Be Now Here also points forward: as a simulation of what net cinema can be, it is both a regard and a provocation.

Michael Naimark
Keywords
  • aesthetics
    • panoramatic
  • genres
    • installations
      • interactive installations
  • subjects
    • Arts and Visual Culture
      • panoramas
    • Media and Communication
      • access
      • media archaeology
    • Power and Politics
      • nationalism
  • technology
    • displays
      • electronic displays
        • projection screens
Technology & Material
Bibliography