Miroslaw Rogala
Holder of ZKM stipend in 1994/95
Lovers Leap
Interactive multimedia installation produced in collaboration with Ford Oxaal and Ludger Hovestadt. Mind's-Eye-View image processing software and programming by Ford Oxaal; 12 D Design Environment and programming by Ludger Hovestadt.
First shown at the MultiMediale 4, Karlsruhe, 1995. CD-ROM version of "Lovers Leap" for artintact 2, 1995.
Description
The installation has two large video screen projections of the busy Michigan avenue bridge in downtown Chicago displayed according to a new perspective system, Mind's-Eye-View. Two fish-eye photographic images from the same station point are processed together into a "pictosphere" and explored along a spectrum that ranges from linear perspective to a circular perspective halfway down the range to a full 360º. The video screen to the right displays the opposite direction of view from the video screen to the left. The visitor interacts with the images on the two screens by moving to different locations on the installation floor or by standing still. Standing in one location long enough triggers an animated sequence of the city corresponding to a given location, or, a randomly selected video sequence of Jamaica that records an activity from daily life, on the beach, or at the "Lover's Leap" of the title. The visitor's movement controls not only the specific view in the four different layers of the Chicago scene, but also whether the transition from one view to another is smooth or abrupt. The sudden shift to Jamaica cannot be controlled by the visitor and is experienced as a "leap" or a "jump cut."
Drawn from the artist's statement.
Interpretation
Though computer technology is associated with rationality and the desire for power and control (Nichols), this same technology can serve the desire to lose control and the irrational. In this installation, both control and loss of control are given a figurative and experiential shape that is linked to the performance of the visitor, that is, his or her position and speed or movement style over a Cartesian grid of locations. Our contemporary life-world is an aggregate of a physical locality and virtual realms that are linked, but not united. (Manovich) In this case, "Chicago" and "Jamaica" correspond less to geographic localities than to states of mind. As Miroslaw Rogala explains, "movement through perspective is a mental construct; one that mirrors other jumps and disjunctive associations within the thought process."
Rogala distinguishes interactivity from control: "When the viewer enters the place, one becomes aware that one's movements or actions are changing the view but won't realize how. This means that the viewer is not really in control, but simply aware of his or her complicity. ... As the viewer's awareness of the control mechanisms grows, so does the viewer's power." By comprehending how the grid and the visual scene interact, the visitor chooses not what is seen, but how it is viewed, from rapid zooms in or out to aerial views of the urban landscape. From the center exactly between the two screens "you'll see eerie fish-eye images that look like a ball with buildings growing out of them." (White) This distorted, circular image is, in effect, a panopticon or mental construct of the omniscient gaze made visible.
Losing control, on the other hand, is figured as a, sudden random shift to entirely different visual surroundings, a wormhole (Shanken 6) to a Jamaican vacation in the midst of the city. This "leap" is metaphorically linked with "falling in love." Access to this other scene depends on one's ability to keep still and to relinquish control to "more abstract associative and conceptual levels." It is also tied to the inspiration for the piece, an actual "Lover's Leap" in Jamaica, in which an incongruous military radar dish scans the sky. Such technological intrusion in the midst of the natural world serves travel that is as likely to be accomplished on a screen or by clicking a remote as by passing through space.
Process
Paradoxically, the Jamaican scenes that appear upon sufficient pause for reflection are moving video sequences, while the shifting perspectives and the hectic motion of the urban scene are based on still photographs. Motion in physical space was mapped with Ludger Hovestadt's 12-D Design Environment by sensor inputs that called up a specific laser disk frame for each location. An ultrasonic tracking system identifies the position of the visitor wearing wireless headphones/sensors on a grid with 117 different possible locations. There are two pre-recorded images on laser disc for the right and left screen in each location. Focal length and perspective setting are determined by the position of the viewer in relation to the length of the installation and the direction of gaze in relation to its width. Street sounds and snatches of conversation for the Chicago sequences are triggered from two audio CD's. There are more than fifty video sequences of Jamaica, each with its own source sound.
The movement of the Chicago scene is an illusion, an artifact of changing position on a spectrum of perspectival systems or the virtual motion of changing focal lengths, i.e. a zoom. The output of views that show any one location from any other location in the "pictosphere" was stored on video disks. Ford Oxaal describes linear perspective as visceral, in that it allows the viewer to perceive data as one would normally in the world. However, the resultant mental construct obeys a certain curvilinear form that can be depicted in its own right, in a range of perspectives with Oxaal's software. The goal is externalize an internal image in the mind, allowing the viewer to stand outside and perceive it, much as the installation as a whole offers a framework for reflecting on position and power in a way that "allows us to learn how to see this new thing," (Warren), that is, how physical and virtual realms are intertwined in an interactive, immersive image environment.
Manovich, Lev. "The Aesthetics of Virtual Worlds: Report from Los Angeles ." 288-300. Digital Delirium. Ed. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
Nichols, Bill. “The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems.” Screen 29 (1988): 22-46.
Shanken, Edward W., "Virtual Perspective and the Artistic Vision: A Geneology of Technology, Perception and Power." Unpublished paper presented at ISEA Rotterdam, 1996.
Warren, Lynne. "Miroslaw Rogala: Lovers Leap."248-53. Photography after Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age. Siemens Kulturprogramm Exhibition Book/Catalogue. Berlin: Verlag der Kunst, 1995.
White, Charlie, "Project Profile: When Two Worlds Collide: Rogala's Lovers Leap." Digital Video Magazine March 1996
(on-line website review)
Research