[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
THERE IS STILL TIME…BROTHER by The Wooster Group
I was looking forward to this piece more than any other at TBA largely because, well, it’s the Wooster Group. Ironically I didn’t know what to expect.
Standing inside The Wooster Group’s first interactive, 360-degree war film the audience is surrounded by an exhilaratingly complex narrative space where the action can only be seen and heard through a virtual “peephole” window that scans the circle, controlled by a member of the audience.
Above, the camera follows the “peephole” perspective whose borders appear like blurred darkness. I spent perhaps an hour and a half in the installation absorbed in the surround and wondering what was going on beyond the focus. It was completely satisfying as a spectator, and I didn’t feel the need to drive until the very end.
How the film introduced itself stands out as a memorable. The narrator says something like ‘the problem with making something interactive for more than one person is that you end up voting’, and therefore they chose to make a piece where everyone watches what one person controls. This wisdom is inseparable from what makes the piece compelling.
The only technical weaknesses related to how the captured-edited-and projected video was stitched together. It wasn’t seamless. Not that this detracted from the experience all that much, but it’s always exciting exciting to dream for an impeccable video experience.
Beyond the technical mediation, it was essentially a really entertaining Wooster Group performance. A little crazy and a lot great. How you watched them was icing on the cake.
—Michael
(originally published on MeAT)
This post has
2 notes and tag:
# TBA10
# art
# Time-Based Art Festival
# Wooster Group
# Portland
.
kuruantigenic liked this
notioncollective reblogged this from michaeleckblad and added:
michaeleckblad posted this
