Adrift 2016

Webcams extend our horizon; traversing cyberspace, our eyes find a new virtual one to settle upon—our mind travels, while our body remains firmly rooted within the material realm. Adift, shown in Pop Gallery Brisbane, Australia, consisted of two semi-circular, scrim screens facing towards each other to form a bisected circle, where the viewer could enter or exit at either end. Surrounding the viewer was a live-video-streaming, 360-degree projection of a limitless sea feed from a webcam installed in Paekakariki, New Zealand. The view looked out to the Cook Strait (one of the most temperamental passages of sea in the world) and the Tasman Sea. The aim was to create an alternative mapping of space: to form a liminal, psychological space.

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The large-scale projection of the compressed video image emphasised the digital structure of the work—underscoring the process of remediation. Occasionally, the rolling digital stream would hiccup and splutter, freezing the image for a few seconds and disrupting and extending one's notion of the present.