TUNNELVISION

of DODGE David

UNITED STATES, 2001, 00:03:12

Production : DODGE David
Genre : Video art
Keyword : Space, Experimental, Place, Memory, Narration

Summary :
Tunnelvision follows an individual worker through public spaces as he alternatively acts as a drone-like machine or an idiosyncratic individual. Vignettes of the worker are arranged in surveillance grids with other video clips of public environments and these in turn are cut against a long tracking shot which passes through a tunnel and then along a moving sidewalk. This shot ineluctably propels the viewer and the worker through the space and the piece and in so doing subtly erodes the boundaries between the public and the private.

Formally, the piece hybridizes several video and film genres from performance video to the long tracking shot to the now familiar multi-channel security monitor (relentlessly following our movements through space) and in a sense examines the gestures of the video image itself. The composite nature of many of the screens emphasizes both the near total mediatization of our contemporary cities as well as the relative and simultaneous nature of these passive streams. In addition, these streams interact with the main line of the performance, expanding and enhancing the resonance of the worker's actions.

I created this piece based on an image I had of a delivery man typing information into a portable hand-held data device. In my mind's eye the tapping motion of the worker's hand seemed much more important than the device he held. The gesture lived on after the device was deleted. This is always and everywhere the case with architecture and city planning. The gestures and movements of the inhabitants continue long after the need or reason for the space has dissolved. What then of the gestures we have developed for interacting with our devices and the media?

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