Creative Tech Week

The Prerogatives of Power: The Good, The Bad and The Perturbed is a multi-screen installation that displays full motion digital video portraits of political leaders from around the world (Obama, Putin, Trump, Cameron, Xi Jinping, Assad, Merkel, Hassan Rouhani, Hollande, Kim Jung Un etc.). An essential part of the total experience is the manipulated audio and video signal in real time. A camera based motion tracking system allows the movement of the gallery visitor to ‘preturb’ the digital video signal, scrambling the video and audio signal to create colorized effects and percussive distortions of the spoken word. For example, in an interview, the embattled president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad is quoted saying: “We do not use barrel bombs.” The motion tracking will trigger the breakup of Assad’s digital video image and the repetition of key words (e.g. b-b-b-barrel, b-b-b-bombs etc.). Wall mounted LCD displays have the visual impact as a gallery filled with large-scale paintings. In this instance the “painting” is full motion digital colorized video pixels. This dramatic format functions as a critique of the use and abuse of power. This multi-screen installation is an homage to Antonio Muntadas’ 1987 installation The Board Room. The viewer’s motion perturbs the audio and digital video signal disrupting and interrupting the speech transforming messaging and political propaganda into visual and auditory artifacts with a separate aesthetic.