Forced Empathy - Anchored Monument I

Forced Empathy - Anchored Monument I, questions the ineluctable relationship between recording and reproduction, by addressing the fundamental constraints of visual documentation. The work also explores the notions of “subject” and “observer”, “input” and “output”, and therefore emphasizes the documentation medium itself. The installation consists in a video, a sculpture and a digital print.

In the video, the artist uses computer programming to freeze an orientation buoy in the center of the frame, being its movement acquired by the background - an exercise on the formal and technical implications of time based documentation. This translation creates an altered visualization of the framed object, resulting in a nauseant yet hypnotic viewing experience.

The sculpture of a small model of the buoy moves mechanically in front of a digital print, the print depicts the two main colors of the video: the sky and the sea, summarizing the background of the recorded image, while the model of the buoy moves in a non organic motion, according to the original coordinates captured in the video.

While the video is a reflective and exaggerated change in perception that caricatures our relationship with mediated knowledge, the model and print are a reduction of the captured scenario to its basic geometric forms.

Anchored Monument I, 2011 - video 7"00