Dead reckoning; Bloc Studios 2003
Arts Council of England
Rose Butler / Ben Crane, Multi-monitor animation and installation
dead reckoning was a site-specific video installation where several modes of time became present within the same space: pre-recorded, digitally re-animated footage, live CCTV cameras and the ‘just past’ time of delayed ‘live’ CCTV footage.
As people navigated their way around the installation, they were confronted by live footage of themselves and other people within the space, footage of themselves from the recent past (20-40 seconds earlier) and a seamless animation taken from footage recorded at the opening of the previous exhibition, which may also have featured people within the space, perhaps themselves or familiar faces.
These elements, combined, created an uncertainty of what was live and what was pre-recorded causing some temporal and spatial confusion, as well as allowing the viewer to respond to and be influenced by their own interaction. Intention and actual behaviour was seen on the monitors, which then immediately influenced their future intention and behaviour creating a subjective loop.
