Anthony McCall’s “Walking in solid air” as io9 said, it almost like a teleporter! –
In blacked-out rooms filled with dry ice, McCall’s projectors trace slowly moving white lines – an undulating wave, two lines extending and intersecting – across the walls of the gallery.
The artificial smoke turns the beams of light into quasi-solid geometric shapes of cones and ellipses, through which visitors can pass. It creates the illusions of being able to walk through solid objects and of one’s body becoming transparent.
These are terrifically original and intellectually solid works of art, which could be described as installations, sculptures, drawings and “dematerialised”, all at once. But they are also thrilling in the way that works of art that convey the sensation of transcending the limits of the body are. It’s art as science fiction.
Walking in solid air| Arts & Exhibitions | This is London – [via] Link & more.
10 thoughts on “Walking in solid air”
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This is most fascinating! Something to see in person definitely!
I saw this in person a few years ago when it was installed at Eyebeam, and it was INCREDIBLE. The pictures don’t to it justice. It’s amazing how the light diffused in the cornstarch dust makes you feel like there’s a wall there, even though the room is completely empty. It’s psychologically difficult to make yourself walk through the “wall!”
There was something similar at the Exploratorium; at least when the Exploratorium visited the IBM Center in NYC in the early/mid 1980s…
It was a darkened room with a projector in the front, pointing back at where you stand. The projector was just playing movies of simple white shapes on a black background (like the above) but they moved around and such. The room was filled with either some sort of water vapor or smoke of some kind.
It had a similar look, only that you were looking down a cone of light, or a line moving around you…
Frankie Says, Relax, we were doing this twenty odd years ago with lasers and smoke machines.
I’m not at all seeing how it’s “almost like a teleporter!”, unless teleporters are now devices that let you walk through walls.