About:
With the work ‘RECORD Record’ a skeleton-like structure sits passively on the gallery’s floor. Two separate video feeds are being projected at either end of its structure which merges somewhere in the structure’s center.
The structure was made up of 14 photo drying racks (made of a black mesh with a wood frame and measures 36″ x 36″) which I found discarded by the photography department at OttawaU. They were then spaced out a few inches apart from each other and held together by some red wool (previously used in The Skinning of Memory (VP2) installation) which was tied to a nail at the top of frames.
Because of the video being projected from either end of the structure, one cannot be certain where one video feed begins and the other ends.
Thoughts on Record. Record
record Record explores how past and present media technology share one thing in common, that is, their ability to mediate the relationship of memory and self identity to a specific space and time.
On the surface, the process by which media technology engages the self is through its promise of faithfully recording, storing and playing back the memory of an event, usually as an auditory and/or visual representation.
However, over time, the process in which this is achieved has evolved significantly, from something opaque and definable such as records, cassette and video tapes to something transparent and elusive – MPEGs, streaming music and video. At one-time analogue media such as a record player allowed for the engagement all the senses, as well as an understanding of its origins, the wood, metal and mechanisms which made it work.
With the introduction of digital and virtual technology, the focus has become much more singular, focusing on the engagement of the auditory and visual, while masking its physical attributes through printed circuits and code.
Influences
“… people live under the earth in a cave-like dwelling. Stretching a long way up toward the daylight is its entrance, toward which the entire cave is gathered. The people have been in this dwelling since childhood, shackled by the legs and neck.
Thus they stay in the same place so that there is only one thing for them to look that: whatever they encounter in front of their faces. But because they are shackled, they are unable to turn their heads around.
Some light, of course, is allowed them, namely from a fire that casts its glow toward them from behind them, being above and at some distance.
Between the fire and those who are shackled [i.e., behind their backs] there runs a walkway at a certain height. Imagine that a low wall has been built the length of the walkway, like the low curtain that puppeteers put up, over which they show their puppets.”
(https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf, accessed 2018)
John Naccarato, record RECORD, The Obscure Objects of Desire and the Rise of the Technological Chimera Exhibition, Video Excerpt 1’10”, AXENEO7, Gatineau, QC, 2010
Below are links to the individual Hybrid Sculptural Objects and their related texts (published as part of my MFA Thesis, The Obscure Objects of Desire and the Rise of the Technological Chimera: Towards Death and the Other ), 2010. Specific segments have been revised and updated for each post. John Naccarato, 2022