Sighting 1994-97

In collaboration with Nina Ackerberg

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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 set up two slide projectors, one on the south side leading commuters downtown and one on the other side leading 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 morning and evening commute hours from November 10 to December 19, 1997.  The projections describe two themes. The Pathway introduces a third path that leads off the commuter track. These high-contrast black-and-white images lead one somewhere else, someplace internal and reflective, dreamy. The Greeting shows people on the train looking directly at the viewer and waving. Some are San Francisco residents, some are from the past. These greetings are for the rider and for what the rider is doing: leaving, arriving, or moving somewhere else within 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 a 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 lives, and which we are immune to and deeply affected 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 moment's 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 pique curiosity.