2013
steel pipe, nylon webbing, cameras, projectors, computer, existing heavy rail
10.1 x 17 x 30 feet
St. Paul, MN
Not only in the movie shows. . . Take a look outside, it's where the truth is really told. — Marvin Gaye. The World Is Rated X, 1972
Two cameras record outward from each end of the piece, and these live-stream films are rear projected life size onto fabric stretched tautly at each opposing end. Audience members looking head on at the outside of the structure can see and respond to what is happening at the other end of the work, as though the intervening space between the displays has been collapsed. The 16:9 proportion of the end walls reference the dimensions of movie screens, creating an image vehicle on this trans-continental railway. The light of the projector appears as an approaching train.
Via these jump cut images, participants are in dialogue with one another, forming new relationships and having unexpected conversations across distance. The gap between the screens is a torsional form that oscillates between a sense of expansion and one of simultaneous compression. This becomes an alternative space for play divorced from the dominant gaze of the camera.
by
Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers
with
Engineering consulting: Clayton Binkley
Steel fabrication: Bo Jacobsson at Discount Steel Supply
Steel shipping and rigging: Murphy Rigging and Erecting
A/V consulting: Matt Visionquest - Yatta
Screen fabrication: Alicia Wold
Installation: students Kamren Kubesh, Madeline Lenaburg, Laurel Nee, and Griffin Pemberton of the University of Minnesota