The Vorkapitchulator

the shift between the microscopic and the orbital view, the light-picture tunnel sets up a new, disproportionate relationship between the beholder and the picture surface. Shadows, the oldest human measurement of time, also show the physical presence of the visitor on the walls of the tunnel, making light-pictures of the viewers. Sound is continuously reconstituted at random within the space, in a manner similar to the treatment ofimages in the installation. The music, composed by Otto Kranzler, is based entirely on speech that is progressively "musicalized" through digital processing and gradually loses its information content. TimeTunnel constitutes a complex sound and image space of a sort that has never before existed, a space to be experienced. THE VORKAPITCHUIATOR Sheldon Brown, University of California at San Diego, Visual Arts Department 0327,9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, U.S.A. Received 12 October 1993. Acceptedfor publication l7y RogerF. Malina. The Vorkapitchulatoris an interactive, computer-controlled video installation concerned with the construction of personal identity through the cultural codes of cinema, particularly those that are derived from computer-graphics tropes (such as three-dimensional [3D] virtual reality space, monumentalized texts and metamorphosing imagery). The piece combines a number of elements , including a modified home-exercise machine that the viewer mounts to operate the piece; a scientific equipment rack, through which the viewer looks in order to construct (both literally and figuratively) his or her view; a viewing-port aperture similar to early computer-plotter "art," consisting of a rotated and scaled square constructed from 2-x-4-in wood beams; and a constructed environment of block letters and images through which several video cameras travel, moving along the various axes provided by a large, rotating lead screw (see Fig. 4). The block letters form a text that is derived from both Girl Scout and Boy Scout manuals. The activities each manual describes are similar, but the verbs used to describe them are different : active verbs refer to the boys, passive verbs to the girls. The images are digitally altered drawings of male and female body parts mounted inside the cylinder on top of the lead screw. When a viewer cranks the generator mounted on the exercise bench, a stepper motor rotates the lead screw, sending a pair of cameras reading through the field of text on a number of preprogrammed paths, imaging the text as 3D logos. One camera rotates around the diorama of images of male and female body parts, causing them to morph in and out of each other at specific rotation speeds. The other camera faces a mirror reflecting the aperture, spinning its image into a vortex. The piece uses references to cinematic montage and computer graphics in its final constructed view, which alternates between 3D images of text and dissolve sequences from separate camera views. These alternating videoimaging sequences are constructed by the two monitors and a series of mirrors . The viewer sees them as virtual images floating in space, framed by the aperture wall. The viewer's interactive process of operating the piece links together its Fig. 4. Sheldon Brown, Vorkapitchulator, computer-controlled interactive video installation, 20 x 20 x 14 ft, 1993. A viewer constructs a reading of the environment by operating a machine that controls the movement of several video cameras through a field of text and imagery. various aspects into its final form. Mounting the weight bench requires that the viewer assume a somewhat awkward , vulnerable position. This causes viewers to be highly self-conscious at the beginning of their interactions with the piece; however, once they start cranking the generator and seeing the image sequences, they forget their bodies and try to understand the imagery. It takes some experimentation to begin to understand how to read the different modes of the piece, with the imagery serving to reinforce certain types of behavior. At the point when most viewers start to operate the piece so that it reads the space, they begin to feel fatigue and regain self-consciousness of their bodies, which creates an awareness of their engagement in the type of behavior that is related to the domain of activities that the narrative of the work is referring to...