Digital video installation
Custom-made panorama camera, PC, data projector, Macintosh, loud speakers
In Morel's Panorama, imagery fed from a
panoramic camera (installed in the centre of the
gallery) is mapped onto a rendered cylindrical
image projected on the walls of the exhibition
space in real-time. This imagery is integrated
with a pre-recorded set of cylindrical images of
Fujihata reading a section of Adolfo Bioy
Casares' novel Morel's Invention. This story
about a special device which perfectly records
images, sounds and sensations (wind, smells,
etc.), projecting them as 3-D recreations, and
the inventor's encounters with the site of
projection, is often used in reference to Virtual
Reality. Resembling the panorama paintings of
19th Century Europe and the panopticon (a
surveillance device used in prisons), the
spectator is immersed in, yet never central to,
the work. They wander through a field of realtime
and recorded information, like the fictional
Dr. Morel, exploring the gap between subjective
experience and reproduced reality.
(Kathy Rae Huffman, Exhibition Guide "The Conquest of Imperfection")