Fields: peter campus

Interface is, effectively, nonexistent until the viewer enters the field. The viewer’s physical and perceptual presence participates in the ongoing unfolding of the work, which is never completed. The space does not exist until it is activated by the viewer. A large sheet of glass is set in a metal frame about six feet from a wall. Behind the glass on the right side is a video camera aimed through the glass at the left side. In front of the glass is a video projector, hooked up to the camera, aimed at the right side of the wall behind the glass. A dynamic field exists in the space, though the field is invisible, vacant, until the viewer enters. The viewer enters the field and is reflected in the glass at the same time that his live, life-size video image is projected on the wall behind the glass. The viewer is confronted with three images of himself, all different. One is the biologically familiar image, known as mass in space, the one known from the insideout, through the senses and thoughts, through daily biological functions, with familiar, routine functions. Another is the reflection in the glass, a purely optical image, one which owes its existence to light reflected on the glass, without mass, touch, etc., known from the outside, measurable only by the eye. The third image is the live, lifesize video image, composed of bits of electrical information gathered by the “retina” of the vidicon tube, transmitted as electrical impulses through the “optic nerve” of the cable, decoded by the “brain” of the projector, and perceived in the mind, measurable only as impulses. Three different mental and physical spaces are simultaneously present, as though one is experiencing the process of perception inside-out, looking through one’s retina at the image formed inside one’s brain. The difference is that in our brains we form a composite image of the optical impression translated into impulses transmitted through the optic nerve, “projected” in our brains, and combined with other information—with thought.