Sighting 1994-97

In collaboration with Nina Ackerberg

Commission, Market Street-in-Transit Public Art Program,  San Francisco Art Commission, CA

Underground projections in the muni transit tunnel

 

The underground portion of the J Church transit line runs underneath Market Street. In this tunnel we sited two slide projectors, one on the south side of the tunnel leading commuters downtown and one on the other side transporting them out. Slide projectors ( remember those) were set with mechanical timers to advance and cast black and white and color  images onto the tunnel walls. Images were projected during commute hours in the morning and evening from November 10-December 19, 1997.  The projections describe two themes. The Pathway introduces a third path that leads off the commuter track. These high contract black and white images lead one somewhere else, someplace internal and reflective, a draydream. The Greeting show people looking directly towards the viewer on the train, waving. Some are San Francisco residents, some are from the past. These greetings are for the rider, and to what the rider is doing: leaving, arriving, moving to somewhere else under the city.

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In the process of circulation on the public transportation system people are in transition, an in-between predicament. The process of moving underground metaphorically suggests deeper lying stratum, the realm of the instinctual, memory and rumination. The projection of random images in the dark passage counters a flow of information, advertising and media imagery that we are saturated with in our daily life and which we are immune to and deeply effected by at one time. We were interested in stimulating an instinctual corporal response. Images of light gathered quickly by one's peripheral vision on a moving train -  in a moments notice - perceived rather than consumed. They become agents or apparitions, glimmerings seen quickly out of the corner of the eye. The project highlights an encounter with "moving images" that perk curiosity.