The Glass Stare

16mm film installation

The Glass Stare is a 3-screen 16mm film installation that explores the philosophical space of reflection, refraction and representation. This work was inspired by the move towards photo-realism within painting (Vermeer and Caravaggio) and paintings relationship to cinema (Andy Warhol’s screen tests). Before the Camera Obscura was invented many painters discovered that mirrors could be used to reflect an image onto a canvas that they could then trace. In many of these paintings, one can study the effects of the dramatic lighting (the cinematic effect) that was needed in order to cast a [upside down] reflected image of the person sitting for their portrait (Supper at Emmaus 1601, Girl with a Pearl Earring 1665). For the Glass Stare we have replaced the person sitting with two film loops that are projected onto 2 adjacent screens. Two mirrors catch these projections and reflect them both onto a small canvas in the middle of the space. This new single composite screen is constantly forming and re-forming an image in front of our eyes bringing to mind the darkroom experience when an image first appears on the photographic paper. In our installation the fixivity of the photographic image remains in a constant state of flux.

“Remote sensors activate the installation when I walk into the space. My eyes dilate to adjust to the semi dark space and to the illumination of the projected light. I am presented with three screens on two horizontal planes suspended in the space. Walking through the installation I can see the two inverted images are back projections, the screen on the right is a negative image moving from dark to light, the screen on the right is the same image only this time it is a positive image moving from light to dark. As I turn to look into the mirror’s I can see clearly the inverted screens, as I move in front of the path of the reflected light that is hitting the mirrors I am editing the work. By that I mean I am cutting off one of the beams of reflected light sources that is hitting the third screen, this is yet another element in the construction of what I am seeing. The work is subtlety shifting, as the duration of the 2 min 45 sec loop returns; I find myself in yet another fluctuating set of relations. I am in a ‘live event’ that predates photography, but it is also like witnessing a Warhol screen test where he has started the camera ‘running’ and walked away, except that I am left here, in the position of the camera”.