Panoramic Acceleration
"Panoramic Acceleration" (1999) is an interactive installation by Marnix de Nijs.
Panoramic Acceleration is an interactive experience machine which works with extreme rotational movement upon the physical body and visual perception.
The visitor sits in a racing seat on a motorized rotating arm and looks at a video projection on a screen which turns with him. The seat is fixed above the axis of the rotating arm, always pointing the view to the screen which circles around the axis.
Two identical video loops are mixed and projected onto the screen. The speed of one of these loops is determined in advance, while the speed of the other is controlled by a joystick in the hands of the viewer. The viewer-driver's attempt to gain control over the situation and to see a stable image requires him to synchronise the speed of his own rotation with the speed of the first video loop, determined by the machine. A sensation of relative visual stasis arises only when the position and the speeds of the two loops coincide.
Panoramic Acceleration radicalises the relationship between the perceiving body and the image machine. While the normal set-up for viewing video images depends on stable and mostly fixed positions of viewer and screen, de Nijs' installation creates an image structure which forces the viewer into an extreme rotational movement - on the verge of nausea. The exaggerated physicality of the set-up emphasises the precarious synchronicity of machine, image and body time.
Panoramic Acceleration is produced in co-operation with MonteVideo/TBA (Amsterdam) and presented for the first time at the World Wide Video Festival 99, Amsterdamdam. Panoramic Acceleration is based on experiences during the CTL 98 experiments in Linz, Austria.
Short description
An interactive experience machine that works with extreme rotational movement upon the physical body and visual perception. Seated on a chair that turns around its own axis, the visitor controls the speed of his own rotation as well as the speed of the camera movement in an image that is projected in front of him. The precarious balance between physical speed and perceptual speed keeps the body on the edge of nausea. Produced in co-operation with MonteVideo/TBA (Amsterdam), based on experiences during the CTL '98 experiments in Linz (A).
