New Horizons: Notes on Video Installation

us is as much a part of this disease as are the people who suffer directly from it. Another important aspect of interactive essays is the opportunity for users to leave their own on-screen video messages .Participants can respond to any of the ideas or statements contained in the essay. This message-leavingaspect pro vokes an interesting reaction in the users. While they may feel comfortable listening to and watching the video clips, once they find they are an integral part of this expanding documentary, they may develop a more powerful recognition of the extent of their potential in the educational task of understanding AIDS. Likewise, this permits the participant to realize immediately the influence he or she has over the production of the essay. Thus, the essay takes on a collaborativequality. all communication. What is new is the interactive computer environment and how it involves the care and attention of all its participants. Understanding that viewers are part of the creation of meaning is an important notion in all communicative acts, be they face-to-face conversationswith other human beings, interactions with the environment, or dialogue with an interactive computer system. Communication, built on the notion of a caring self, results in a diligent acknowledgment of the contingent events that inform our lives. Interactive computer systems, designed with this human recognition in mind, may help us better understand ourselves and the world in which we live. Interaction is nothing new; it is part of Technical Specifications Portrait of PeopbLiving withAILISwas created on a Macintosh IIci with 20-megabyte (MB) random-access memory (RAM) and 210-MB hard drive, an Apple Cache card, RasterOps 24STV video card and a SuperMac Video Spigot card. A 1.5 gigabyte Micropolis hard drive was used as the primary storage device during production . Also used was a MicroTek 1850 slide scanner. The software for the work was created with a combination of Hypercard stacks and MacroMind Directorand Apple QuickTimemovies. The installation of Portrait ofPeople Living withAIDS has ranged from the simplest demonstration set-upswith only a Macintosh IIsi with an Apple 12-in monitor and a 44-MB SyQuestdrive, to its current full 1.5gigabyte installation with a Macintosh Quadra 950, 19monitors , and a large-screenprojection TV. Installations include the live video cap ture equipment with a Sony 8-mm video camera attached to a SuperMacVideo Spigot card, and microphone (or a Farallon MacRecorder, depending on the system). NEW HORIZONS: NOTES ON VIDEO INSTALLATION Ron Rocco (sculptor, visual artist), 209 President Street,#2, Brooklyn, NY 11231,U S A . Received 28 September 1992. Acceptedfor publication 4RogerF. Malina. In the spring of 1990,I was asked by the Brooklyn Museum to create a work that would fill one of the museum’s contemporary art galleries for the exhibition Wmltingin Brooklyn.My ambition was to use the installation to address the precarious state of our relationship with the natural environment. The title for the work, TheHorizonIsNothingMore Than the Limit of OurSighl, was extracted from the funeral eulogy of my beloved mother -in-law, the naturalist ShirleyWood of Block Island, Rhode Island, United States.This work,which stands as a memorial to her spirit,was inspired by her continuous efforts to bring parcels of land into conservancy on that island. The installation consistsof three elements assembled within the darkened room (Fig. 2). At the entrance to the installation a video monitor stands before a labyrinth of steel barricades, tree branches and underbrush. Beyond these obstructions stands the third element : a luminous copper house-like structure imprinted with the pattern of tree branches through which light is transmitted. The technology used in the construction of this element originated in the computer industry. A circuit board-a copper-coated laminate over fiberglass-was photographically processed and then acidetched to reveal the underlying translucent surface in the pattern of the tree branches. Six panels were then constructed into the house-like structure and illuminated from within to display the organic framework. encounters first upon entering the room, sets the mood and cadence for the approach to the installation. The video screen depicts a dense landscape of underbrush and ponds. The image, a looped 30-sec computer-sampled segment of...