Monitored Landscape Series is an ongoing body of
site-specific live installations. The work originated as an ambitious but crude
MA Show at the RCA in 2006, and has since evolved into a
substantial series of installations within both group and solo exhibitions in
the UK and abroad. The work consists of a continuous live moving image
presented on a single monitor or digital projection created by the relay from a
small camera mounted on a model train as it tracks through a constructed
landscape of circuit boards. The work relates to my specific interest in the
idea of the ‘city metropolis’ being a living machine and explores the
architectural, perceptive, and conceptual similarities of the built up
environment to the increasingly technological yet mysterious world inside the
computer and modern infrastructure.
Playing with scale, illusion, and reality, and deliberately
using live cctv cameras to create a constant image, presents the structural
mechanics of filmmaking for all to see. The unedited physical loop of the train
camera layout offers an audience the experience of Initially viewing the live
relay on screen, and then progress further into the gallery space to discover
the sculptural assemblage that makes it. The live camera picks up aspects of
the viewers surroundings creating a continuous interaction where the audience
looking at the train camera are merging within the landscape and being viewed
as part of the live relayed image by anyone looking at the initial screen or
projection. The individual identity of the audience members, unlike real uses
for cctv is insignificant. They are merely a visual component to the structural
background of the landscape, and a transcending bridge between the camera and the
image that due to the layout of the two parts are unable to view themselves on
screen.
I have previously exhibited many versions of this work in
many formats. In 2007 the work was shown with the combination of a small sculptural
piece and large projection; both in separate gallery spaces in Transformer at the Woburn Centre in London.
Later in the year and my first solo show in Outpost Gallery in Norwich the work evolved into a
large installed landscape around a centre projection screen in the darkened
gallery, the track constructed around the edge of the space climbing up to
complete the loop over the top of the entrance doors. In 2009 I was successful
in being awarded an Arts Council Grant to construct a new and large version for
East International
in Norwich where the work was over 10m x 10m in floor area and positioned in a
light sunny gallery space where the image feed shown on an adjacent monitor.
The same installation then toured to Trafo Gallery in Budapest where I had my first
international solo show in a basement gallery space in 2010.
All the various installations of the Monitored Landscape
Series were similar in construction but very different in outcome because of
the gallery spaces and resulting image created from the location. The camera
although always passing the assemblage of circuit boards responds to aspects of
the light levels, colour, background, architecture of the surroundings and
makes each version unique, and new versions offer further possibilities to
explore the variations within the work. For the first time using the
installation at Trafo Gallery I captured a series of still images that I have
complied as a printed edition, and using a future version I aim to record a
section of the moving image and create a permanent filmic edition of the work.
With no interest in model making, or creating specifically
recognizable landmarks. This work instead focuses on the aesthetics of the
liminal places, in-between journeys and nowhere places. Physically questioning how much (or little) visual information is
needed before a viewer allows their suspension of disbelief to escape the
reality of the actual material in front of them and inflict their own
connections on what they see. The magic of the work itself lies in the reality
of how the moving image is produced, and for the viewer is the moment in
linking of the two parts together.
