»Going to the Heart of the Center of The Garden of Delights« 
Light Box
Light Box
© Jeffrey Shaw
Keywords
Information
Jeffrey Shaw >
»Going to the Heart of the Center of The Garden of Delights«, 1986
Co-Workers & Funding:
Software: Larry AbelHardware: Charly Jungbauer
Technology
Display
computer graphics video projection onto a large screenInterface
Infra-red sensors
Descriptions & Essays
The installation was made specifically for the neo-Gothic Vleeshal in Middelburg and consisted of a computer graphics video projection onto a large screen at the far end of the room opposite the entrance. Infra-red sensors and seven pairs of blue lights along the floor defined a path from the entrance area to the screen. The visitor walking towards the screen interactively controlled a sequence of transformations in the image and sound. The sequence of digitally processed images was derived from works by Yves Klein (Portrait Relief Arman), Nagisa Oshima and Hieronymus Bosch. A conjugation of the representational image and its underlying digital structure was articulated in the transformations of a frame from Oshima's film The Empire of the Senses into a portion of Bosch's painting The Garden of Delights. The interactive sequence showed a progressive digital reduction of the Oshima image into a more and more abstract configuration, and out of this raster of picture elements the Bosch image gradually appeared. The sequence was reversed when the viewer walked away from the screen. The viewer's lone journey from the entrance up to the surface of the screen embodied a virtual journey through a set of images that had been architectonically mapped into the installation space. This convergence of an exoteric and an esoteric journey reiterated the conjunction of profane and sacred allusions presented in the work's iconographic structure.
Literature
Exhibitions & Events