Untitled Installation(1998-Reprise)

A deep sound fills this space, and in some ways defines it as the space itself is in darkness, with only the light from small three small lightboxes, that have hand written text on them. The deep sound is continuous, apart from a small break every minute, the sound reverberates within the space and echoes within the ear of the viewer. Moving to take a close look at the texts, there is a sudden flash of bright light and all light is extinguished. The lights highlighting the text disappear, the sound continues, and, above it all is the high sound of a flash recharging. Slowly texts are re-illuminated, although if the viewer attempts to move towards them again, or indeed away from them, there will be another flash of light resulting in his or her retinas closing and the room being once again left in darkness. With each flash, there is a moment when the shadow of the viewer is frozen against the walls, leaving an after image when all is dark. Similarly, if the viewer is not alone, the position of others in the room is frozen in a type of memory after image until the next flash of light, or if this does not occur because the viewer has been remaining motionless and unnoticed by the rooms sensors, until their eyes adjust to the darkness.

All the while, there is still the deep reverberating sound filling the space. Some may choose to spend time and attempt to read all of the texts, others will leave through frustration, indifference, or perhaps just because they have no desire to read the texts.

The texts are of a personal nature in the first person voice, they are hand written in an untidy hand. One of them begins:

"I wish I could remember that strange question you asked me a few years ago. I was washing the dishes and you were just sort of hanging around not doing a lot. It was one of those mammoth dish-wash exercises that seemed to be taking all afternoon. You were talking about the cat, and the weather, the usual things. Then you asked me a question. I�m not at all sure what it was about, I seem to remember it being of a personal nature, and that I never saw you in quite the same light ever again. With those few words you seemed to change."

The nature of the interactive device in the room is that the sensors will not pick up the presence of a viewer if he or she is standing still. There is the possibility of reading the texts by standing still in front of them and hence, not causing their lights to turn off in the flash of light created by the sensor's reaction to movement. If a viewer is in the room alone, they will be able to deduce this fact and act accordingly. If, on the other hand, there is a group of people in the room, the sensor will react to each of them and make it more difficult for each separate viewer to come to any conclusion as to how the flashing of light and turning off of the text lights is operating. A single viewer may find that they interact with the sensor system, text, sound and space, whilst a group of viewers may feel that they are interacting with one another within the confines of the physical space, sonic space, and text space.