The Forever Field

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Sound and Video Installation by Michael McNabb

Stereo mix from 8-channel surround original.

The Forever Field is a meditation on the ways that our lives and identities are inescapably defined and transformed by time. Sounds which evoke the memories of childhood, thoughts of relationships, and impressions of old age swirl together in space in constantly-rearranging and never-repeating patterns of association, representing non-linear psychological time, or memory. The video monitors display processed images of distance, erosion, travel, and natural forces, representing spatial and geological time, and entropy. The projection screen displays processed images of carousels in motion, punctuated by fleeting clouds, representing our subjective feelings of the immediate present, or experiential time. The projected images are seen in vertical format within a classical picture frame and are projected only when a person is near the screen, emphasizing the intimate and personal nature of our concept of time. Sounds made by visitors near this screen are picked up, processed into musical material, and redistributed along with the pre-recorded sounds, adding a „memory“ of the visitor to the work itself.

Physically, the work is a continuously-running walk-in multimedia installation, consisting of an 8-channel audio sound field, two or more video monitors, video projection, and supporting sculptural elements. Recorded and processed sounds are performed and realistically moved in 3-dimensional space in real time, using synthesized azimuth, distance, and doppler processing. Video and audio sensors react to the presence of visitors by changing the content and real-time processing of sounds, warping the spatial sound fields, and controlling the video projection level.

The Forever Field premiered at the 1993 International Computer Music Conference in Tokyo, Japan.