Pool

Pool is a video installation that uses Jitter programming and motion sensors to create an interactive, ever shifting environment of moving images, architecture and sculpture. Pool creates a physical analogue for the inner architecture of memory. The project is rooted in Ars Memoriae, a mental system that allowed the ancients to create epics, before writing was invented. Reflecting the mnemonic devices of the Method of Loci, Pool sets out to pair memory to place. Epically scaled images on the wall are juxtaposed with ghostly images filling a wide, shallow bowl on the floor. The work is best viewed by hovering slightly above ground level, and this is accommodated by providing a lifeguard-like chair which the viewer can climb and sit in. Entering the room, one first sees a young woman with closed eyes, caught in a moment of reflection. But from this moment, the five channels of video shift, alter, and re-pair in response to the viewer's presence and movement in the room. Interactive programming mimics the real experience of memory, as it constantly combines and recombines in ever-changing layers and sequences of images—never quite repeated identically—just as episodic memory behaves.