Disappearing Subjects and Material Objects

As I am writing away on my dissertation, I stumbled across my old projects from the MSAAD days at Columbia in 2008/2009. The question of the subject and the object, and how they are both constructed and made to disappear is central in my work. Here is a sampling from some visual experiments I made for a studio project for South Africa.

 

Candice Breitz’ “Portrait of the King”

Trying to understand the fragmentation of the King (Michael Jackson) through the performance of one of his songs by several fans (shown synchnroneously), I traced the respective performances in their spatial expression over time. Isolating a key movement, or key phrases, I modelled a 3D score of the performance as spatial fragments.

The subsequent overlay of all these fragments results in one spatial score for the whole song, reconstructing the subject of the king through the imitations of his fans. A spatial impression of the King’s work as temporal trace—drawing music into space with the body.

Starting with the visual breakdown of the performance over time, tracing movements in key moments of the subject’s interpretation.

090203_KING

Drawing a score of several voices, a chorus, emulating the King.

090203_KING

Spatializing time, body, and musical movement for each one.

atm2126_QUARTER_Detail2

Recombining them to one spatial chorus, the reconfiguration of the King over time.

Spatial Notation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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