INTERMEDIA ART
Joan Grossman & John Toth
on the Hudson River
RIVER
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project description:download:
River_Proposal.pdf
RIVER: Hudson River Intermedia Installation Project
Since the summer of 2008 we have been canoeing the Hudson River and recording high definition video and audio for a multi-screen media installation. "Celebrations" of Henry Hudson's explorations have taken place along the river to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his journeys, but they are mostly nostalgic. We are creating a work that is technologically complex, meditative and contemporary. The piece draws on the river's history, but does so in a critical and experimental way. River takes an eccentric perspective, fixated on the water’s mutable surface, textures and reflections that seem to express its incessant state of transformation. The history we are presenting is also aberrant. "Explorations" and "discoveries" open problematic questions. River represents the community of the Hudson – past and present, nature and culture.
Video sequences surround viewers and draw them into rich encounters – some are purely experiential; others draw on passages from diary accounts that documented Hudson's journey (observations of abundant wildlife – now gone – and encounters both friendly and violent with local "savages"); and still other sequences explore aspects of a word or phrase (the flow of time, the flow of water, the flow of people). River is a media collage. The elements of this piece are sound and image from the river, voice, mappings and animated text that offer a lexicon of place, story, meaning and imagination – all of which are subject to metamorphosis, fluid signifiers that shift through time and perspective. The piece presents multiple vantage points that can be experienced in momentary fragments or as a unified whole.
Diary - Silvery Moodna - Crickets - Installation 4 - Virtual Installation - Video Installation
project demo:
Joan Grossman and John Toth, River Crickets , 7:36
project organizers:
Joan Grossman: joanrg@earthlink.net
John Toth: john@johntoth.net
technology interface:
education:
River (c) copyright 2009 Joan Grossman and John Toth