Tiffany Sum and Jonathan Minard

A video character is projected on the bright white wall in an isolated room. Holding a “finger-gun”, she is staring at the audience. Through visual computerization, her finger-gun will follow the motion of the audience in response to their spatial occupation inside the room. The size of the video character will change in relations to the proximity between the audience and the character: the closer the distance between them, the bigger the video character. If the audience stays completely still for more than 7 seconds, she will “shoot” at them, as well as herself in the virtual space. Nobody is hurt in the end but herself. The magic of montage becomes a tragic representation through visual and audio effects.

Inspired by the last sequence of Edwin A. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1904): a Western man firing a gun at the camera, the tabloid of gaze and the reflexivity of moving images capture the moment of representation and reality at the same time. Also interplay with the action genre in Hong Kong, the significance of the index finger does not only limit to a sexual sublime, but also a classic kung-fu fatal move. This is an interactive video installation using computer visualization to track the audience’s movement and create the illusion of the magic/tragic of montage.

URLs:
Tiffany Sum | Portfolio
http://www.sumworks.com