Visceral Cinema: Chien

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Visceral Cinema: Chien, 2005

By Scott Snibbe

Visceral Cinema: Chien re-imagines the surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou, by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. The work combines key moments from the film with viewers' shadows to form interactive projections. All of the action occurs in silhouette. Initially, viewers see a large video projection of a man pulling a grand piano towards the viewer. When viewers walk between the projector and the projection, their shadows affect the projected man's actions. If a viewer moves between the man and the piano, the piano is pushed back, causing the man to strain harder and lose ground. If a viewer intersects the man, the man dissolves into ants at their point of intersection, and the ants gradually overtake the entire screen. This application of surrealist techniques to an interactive setting plays with viewers' sense of image, representation, shadow, body, and self.

This work is part of a larger series of interactive wall projections that are based on masterpieces of experimental film. Each work focuses on aspects of these films that lodged in the artist's mind, rather than on a literal revisiting of the work. Indeed, these salient memories have often turned out to be incorrect, or even imagined, when compared back to the original film. For Chien, this working process mirrors the surrealist creative methodologies of probing the unconscious.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Scott
• Snibbe
• Interactive
• Immersive
• Digital
• Cinema
• installation
• Art
• Un
• Chien
• Andalou
• Salvador