20 feet vinyl print on MDF
735 cm x 22 cm
3 x 3:33min video on broadcast monitors, looped.
2023
1.5 miles, 3 minutes and 33 seconds in 20 feet was produced to explore the experience of time as a flat image. The piece is an object of displayed time that could be reinterpreted to new spaces by being folded and bent to fit to the site.
The piece was shot as a video, wherein the horizon line of a 1.5 mile dirt road was recorded over 3:33 seconds.
horizon line of a 1.5 mile drive along a dirt road was recorded in 3 minutes, 33 seconds. In post-production, each frame was exported as a single image and was used to stitch together the long, panoramic image.
Mid-ground, and horizon line existed on separate spatial planes, and each needed to be stitched separately. In the process of stitching each of these together, the foreground seemed to move much quicker than the mid-ground, and the mid-ground quicker than the horizon line. As well, the construction of this piece realises that more frames were needed to create the foreground which only operated in the bottom one-sixth of the printed image (whereas the mid-ground took up two-sixths and the horizon line took up three-sixths of the printed image).
There is never a defined horizon line, as it is continually edited by the following frame of the image, never giving a comfortable unity or static vanishing points. Shifts and curves in the road distort this even more, and through the process of flattening these movements into a technical image, the bends in the road aid in a sense of perspective in the panoramic. Since this panoramic is made from a moving image, the perspective of each frame differs. When stitched all together there is not one set perspective, and instead an infinite spatial perspective is alluded to. Because of this continual shift in perspective, some visual elements are reiterated from new points of view, something that is also not granted in the traditional panoramic. This further enhances the dialectical image where the past and present come together in the moment of viewership of the image.
The work begins to dismantle the traditional production of space in the photographic image, and continuously shifts just as if the viewers move in the landscape themselves. At the same time, by flattening 3 minutes, 33 seconds of movement into a printed image, the piece does not separate the past and future but situates them together. In the original moving image, the landscape disappears into the previous frame, whereas this piece can be viewed all at once, the past and future of the drive existing to the left and right of the panoramic. By using the continually shifting frames of a moving image to create a panoramic, the past and future sit side-by-side, creating a unique temporal panoramic.
Although the flattened temporal panoramic is the focal point of the theory in this piece, three video monitors sit in front of it, showcasing the three spatiotemporal planes covered. The bottom monitor showcases the foreground, moving extremely fast, the middle monitor as the mid-ground, and the top monitor as a horizon line, slowly passing. Although each screen matches up when played at the same time to show one continuous image, the black frames of the monitors enhance the kinaesthetic perception of movement on each of the three planes. By framing out the three speeds of the three planes separately, we see each plane individually, even though they produce one image. The three monitors are also stacked, one on top of the other, forcing the viewers to judge the height against their own bodies, thus creating a more embodied experience.
As the video monitors are looped, time is perpetual, never finding the beginning or end of the drive, in a constant and unending sense of the movements at each plane. In the printed element of this work, the image eventually ends; however, the looping of the three videos comments on the closed circulatory nature of the images, in an endless revolution of time that revolts against the traditional linear narrative.