Deep Walls (2003)

• 74%
• 2003
• Scott Snibbe

Deep Walls is inspired by architect Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language". His admonition to architects is to build the walls of homes thick, so that cabinets, drawers and windows can perforate the interior space, providing areas to store, display, and slice through and ultimately provide more meaning within the home. In the spirit of Alexander, this work gradually absorbs the contents of its environment onto its surface, creating a cinematic cabinet of sixteen silhouette recordings of viewers' own shadows. By collecting viewers' shadows, the piece destroys the fantasy and illusion of cinema, replacing these with a structured representation of an active audience. Since each small recording retains the duration of the events within, a complex musical relationship between the cinematic loops emerges.