Monster Manual installation
Monster Manual installation
video projection and 8-channel sound
Monster Manual explores ideas of human transformation and the role of metamorphosis in our shared cultural images of embodiment. Four video channels are projected in a vertical column, partially overlapping, to form a narrow image of human scale. Each video represents a “monster”, culled from a bestiary of cinema creatures and corresponding to a transformation of the human form. The piece consists entirely of images and synch sound from the moments in each of these films where the monster reveals itself to us.
The top frame shows creatures of the head and the brain; the frame below demonstrates full body transformations; the third frame shows moments when a new creature births from its host body, and the bottom frame combines two specific types of shots: images of empty hallways, and shots of arms receiving injections into their veins.
Together, these images for a new image-body, whose horror is shown to be not simply horrific, or ugly, but rather expansive and organic, showing a kind of mutational creativity that describes the realm of digital media and its transformative powers just as powerfully as it renders the metamorphoses of the human body.
video projection and 8-channel sound
Monster Manual explores ideas of human transformation and the role of metamorphosis in our shared cultural images of embodiment. Four video channels are projected in a vertical column, partially overlapping, to form a narrow image of human scale. Each video represents a “monster”, culled from a bestiary of cinema creatures and corresponding to a transformation of the human form. The piece consists entirely of images and synch sound from the moments in each of these films where the monster reveals itself to us.
The top frame shows creatures of the head and the brain; the frame below demonstrates full body transformations; the third frame shows moments when a new creature births from its host body, and the bottom frame combines two specific types of shots: images of empty hallways, and shots of arms receiving injections into their veins.
Together, these images for a new image-body, whose horror is shown to be not simply horrific, or ugly, but rather expansive and organic, showing a kind of mutational creativity that describes the realm of digital media and its transformative powers just as powerfully as it renders the metamorphoses of the human body.
