Passing Figure  (1999)

Collection of Religion & Education
University of Northen Iowa

Single channel video
Stereo audio
5:00 exhibition loop    1:00 sample


     The figure of a woman in forward motion emerges from black.  Again and again she appears in numerous planes and aspects.  New images of her materialize briefly where these planes and aspects coincide, artifacts of her ceaseless movement.  The woman is never completely defined, always becoming.  A voice whispers texts from various Buddhist sources over synthesized and sampled sound.

     In Passing Figure, there is only one visual element, the woman running forward in slow motion.  I have treated her movement in a kind of visual counterpoint, mirrored in the audio by the layering and reiteration of four whispered texts, again, a contrapuntal device.  Nearly static images, punctuated in the audio, appear at long intervals providing a simple temporal rhythm and structure to the piece.