Threshold
Art Space, Perth Concert Hall
After a blaze of tailor-made launch events, the Threshold art space
in Perth is settling into its daily cycle. The towns brand new,
all singing, all dancing concert hall comes complete with the most
up to date new media technology. In fact even the front door is an
interactive entrance box, with a range of speakers activated
by your movements.
Once youve thoroughly confused the automatic doors with your
leaping about, youll find yourself in the light-filled foyer,
watched over by a bank of 22 plasma screens spanning the length of
the concert hall. These are the Threshold Wave.
The Threshold team have used open source software free to anybody
to reuse and modify to programme the screens. Artists have
made the most of this unique set-up to stretch their moving images
as wide as they can go, or to mix and match different videos in a
kaleidoscopic display.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the format, the emphasis of most of
the Threshold commissions is on landscape; forests and water appear
more than once. The conventional proportions of the Threshold Stage
make it an under-exploited add-on, as artists concentrate their efforts
on the more enticing challenge of the Wave.
Hamilton and Ashrowans Landscape Symphony In 22 Movements leaves
the most lasting impression. The artists visited Rumbling Bridge,
where over a century ago, Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais
spent months observing the waters before painting them. The pair have
done the same, this time with video, slowing and stretching the rippling
waters across the length of the Threshold Wave. The result is colourful,
lyrical and hypnotic.
Steven Hendrys Murder In Birnam puts the screens to work in
a different way. Four central screens show MacBeth wandering the woods,
while all around him the trees are closing in. The repetition and
mirroring of these 18 trees on 18 screens creates a whole new dramatic
device.
Dan Perjovschis digital frescos provide a counterpoint
to the high-definition finesse of the other artists works. His
darkly satirical doodles, made in black marker pen on paper, are sent
to the venue over the internet like a news story over the wire. Flashing
up on the bank of screens they have instant authority. For those who
think that high-tech art spells the death-knell for traditional modes
of art, Perjovschis drawings are here to prove otherwise.
Catrìona
Black, Sunday Herald 09.10.05