Split Seconds (1979)

10m 37s

1/2" EIAJ

 

This video is a single channel version of a video installation. It shows two monitors, one large and a smaller portable one to the front, both of these displaying the same video feed, in which a log is being chopped. Both monitors are wedged in some soil to recreate the angle at which the action was shot by the camera (30°). The installation was accompanied by a series of photographs, which analysed the videotape. The smaller monitor partially obscures the larger one, but at the same time reveals the entire scene. Different symmetry and shift effects are produced, creating a sort of reversed mise-en-abyme, evoking the effect of video feedback.

The disposition of the monitors also creates a visual effect like the axe in the large monitor is hitting the small monitor. This suggests a critique to broadcast television.

The act of cutting wood also references the renown Jan Dibbets’ piece, 'TV as a fireplace' (1969).

The installation evokes and conveys in various ways the concept of splitting: the material chopping of the wood, the ‘split second’ where the image briefly freezes before and after each strike that our eye is not able to perceive and the splitting of the image in the monitors. Our perception and the notion of the ‘video eye’ to capture reality is questioned and analysed.