Floating Plaster / City Motion 2006

Video: Floating Plaster / City Motion 2006

Documentation of floating plaster/city motion, an intermedia installation by Robert Campbell and Yuki Nakamura.
Work was exhibited at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle, Peeler Art Center at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and Currents 2011 International Digital Media Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Floating Plaster / City Motion, 2006

Collaboration by: Yuki Nakamura and Robert Campbell

Hydrocal plaster, DLP projectors, DVD players, synchronizer, speakers, DVDs

Installation 9(h) x 30 (w) x 40(d) ft

Sculpture 1(h) x 14(w) x 4(d) ft

9 min 31 sec

 

Floating Plaster / City Motionis a multimedia installation comprised of video and cast sculpture. Incorporating three synchronized video projectors, which become one moving image, image becomes sculpture, and sculpture image through the dynamic interplay between image, motion, sound and form. The work integrates sculptural formal aesthetics with architectonic video projections of animated imagery toward the creation of an evocative and dynamic installation.

 

Floating Plaster / City Motion 2006・2007

プロジェクター、石膏、シンクロナイザー、スピーカー

「Floating Plaster / City Motion」は、ロバート・キャンベル氏とのコラボレーション。パリのサン・ルイ島とシテ島の地図のフットプリントを元に石膏のブロックを再現し、その無機質な石膏の表面上に映像を映し出した。雪を降らせ、太陽に祝福され、砂嵐ノイズが現れ、虫の群やミサイルが飛び交い、線が石膏をなぞり、光が閃光し、爆弾によって破壊されるアニメーションをサウンドとともに表現した。

シンクロされた3台のプロジェクターから映し出される映像が1つの映像になり、イメージは彫刻となり、イメージ、動き、音、形のダイナミックな相互作用によって彫刻がイメージとなる。この作品は、彫刻的なのフォルムの美しさと、アニメーションイメージを投影した建築的なビデオを融合させ、躍動的でダイナミックなインスタレーションを実現させた。

 

kingdom, come

by jen graves

In the perpetual future, our size is changeable. While we become godlike, peering down at a small earth from planes and spaceships and skyscraper observatories, through microscopes and zoom lenses we burrow like ticks. The artists Yuki Nakamura and Robert Campbell transport us back now to a quaint mutation of scale — the miniature movie set — but instead of blowing up the sculptural miniature into a photographic cinema that reinforces natural scale, they construct a defiant, desirable city where no person can live, a city that goes on despite us.
It is forever small, and we are forever too big. Now we are like gods who wish to be human again.

The installation, called Floating Plaster/City Motion, sits on the floor in a dark room at 911 Media Arts Center. It is two silent white islands, which also resemble glowing ships of empire, of cast-plaster shapes with urban-style canyons between. The islands are based on the footprints of the Ile Saint-Louis and the Ile de la Cité in Paris, but they have become anonymous. Three synchronized projectors create one moving image across the surfaces of the buildings and streets and alleys. Bits of snow drop on the two cities, streaks of traffic careen down their avenues and the cities are caressed by sun, sketched by architects and destroyed by bombs. The animated realm that results from the changing combination of surface and form is abstract and suggestive, like a map, a telescoped view, a war zone broadcast from a safe distance.

 

floating plaster/city motion

by elizabeth brown

Floating Plaster/City Motion is a new multi-media installation by Robert Campbell and Yuki Nakamura, who worked together for the first time in the New Works Laboratory residency program. Having fixed on a basic formal approach, they developed a series of elements that were striking on their own but would respond to projected light. The moving sequence, which runs approximately nine minutes, evokes the drama of a city: shifting lights, moving traffic, incidents of weather and other elements in flux that capture the pulse of a place. Nakamura’s expertise with sculpture freed Campbell to enjoy object-making, while Campbell enabled Nakamura’s first experiences with projected animation. The two artists contributed equally to the refinement and resolution of each part, working together to make a new whole.

New Works Laboratory is a collaborative project between 911 Media Arts Center and the Henry Art Gallery. It is an intensive residency program that pairs visual artists working in traditional media with digital media artists experimenting with new technologies, to co-create and exhibit new and innovative works of art.