Inertia

Inertia
image/jpeg
5120 × 2160

Inertia, 2010-11 | Music Henry Vega | Dance Géraldine Fournier | [Materials] Projectors, Computers, Media Player. Dimensions: 5m x 5m x 2.0m



Utilizing the cut-up technique, a methodology commonly associated with the aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new sentence. A concept traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s but popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs. Here it is used in a contemporary way with video editing software, cutting moments in time to choreograph the random dance movements and gestures of the dancer Géraldine Fournier and thus create eight individual animations. These animations are synchronized on eight equally spaced TV screens, arranged on the circumference of a circle. Accompanying these animations is an eight-channel electronic musical composition by Henry Vega. Essential sounds are spatially positioned on each TV screen and assist the viewer in determining the focal point of the visual motion. So the observer finds themselves in an artificial 360° panorama. Initially, when a viewer enters the space containing the artwork, each TV screen displays static, and their speakers fill the environment with white noise. Upon recognition of the observer's presence, the static fades out, and the animation begins. The choreography of the movement flows between the TV screens, so even though each screen displays its unique film, the screens are seemingly interconnected.

Coproduction l’Allan, Scène Nationale de Montbéliard dans le cadre d’une résidence [ars]numerica, Centre Européen dédié aux arts numérique. Special thanks to: Yasmina Demoly, Jean Claude and Gilles Marchesi.

The accompanying video is a simplified version compiling five individual TV screens into a single video to produce a 180° panorama.