Watershed Media Centre

Bristol March/April 99

Pinsky uses a fixed video camera to record things that happen outside the gallery space-from commonplace events in the bar and conference room, to activity on a construction site and 24 hours of overhead sky. Three segments, comprising 15 minutes, are projected onto two halves of a three-D cube, at many times their normal speed. The cube is seemingly wrenched apart, dominating opposite gallery corners, its halves forming immersive environments that intoxicate, yet also seek to alienate. The rapid pulse of activities from a recording of a one minute gig ( identified only from the incongruous 'on-air' sign), to a comical bird's eye view of the movie ticket seller whose erratic movements appear like strobe lighting turn the work into a spectacular fly -on-the-wall study of microscopic traces of modern day urban life. The viewer is initially a passive onlooker, but when the visual information becomes nothing more than a collection of colour pixels, their shadow partially blanks the screen and forces them centre stage. Virillo's notion of social spaces collapsing, as we increasingly become the spectators and consumers of the landscapes that we inhabit, is evident, but other enquiries surface. The shortest zoom in, lasting 1 minute 52 seconds, transforms the cube's surface in glowing colour washes, disrupted, only by momentary flutters of movement. Although it only lasts for a matter of minutes, in real time , it seems to stretch out for the longest duration. As Pinsky plays with time compression, the cube becomes an interface form which spring many possibilities. By assembling a variety of interactive signposts from three D environments and public spaces, to a project ton the sprawling Internet Pinsky extends the work into a range of malleable virtual and real hotlinks, in which the viewer is not only engaged but also implicated.

Creative Camera. Issue 357.April/May 1999 Caroline Smth