Hallucination

Inhaltliche Beschreibung

"Hallucination" is a more elaborate version of "Interactive Hallucination" which was originally shown in 1988. Hallucination creates an image in a video "mirror" that distorts the reality of the live image by engulfing the viewer in flames in image and sound. The flames are only superimposed (keyed) where the people are within the image. The rest of the image reflects an accurate representation of the room. The flames are in color and the rest of the image is in black & white. The volume of the burning sounds is proportional to the distance of the viewer from the mirror. In other words, when no one is within the range of the mirror, there is no sound, and the closer the viewer gets to the mirror, the louder the flame sounds get. Another distortion of reality in the “mirror” is in the form of a virtual woman (she can be recognized on the videotape and slides by the fact that she is wearing a gray jump suit and she is not on fire). From time to time, this woman shows up in the reflection. The viewer might be standing looking at a reflection of themselves burning, and all of a sudden, a woman will be standing next to them in the reflection, but in reality there is no one next to them. Sometimes this woman does things that affect the live image. For example, she flips a coin and if she gets tails the viewers disappear, and if she gets heads they reappear. (Jim Campbell)

Technische Beschreibung

The technical challenge for "Hallucination" was figuring out how to accurately separate people out from within a video image without using a blue screen background. At the time this had never been done before as far as I knew. Obviously computers were too slow at the time to be able to do this, so I developed my own hardware to solve the problem.
One major component of the system hardware is the video difference keyer which looks at the pixel by pixel difference between a frozen video image of the empty room (stored every morning) and the live image and creates a key signal from this difference.
(Jim Campbell)

Hardware / Software

50" rear projection 4x3 video monitor, b&w camera, 2 laser disc players, custom designed image processing electronics, Mac+ computer, Hypercard (since updated to PC and C++) (computer is just used as a sequencer)

Statement

"Hallucination" was the first artwork that I created and I had unreal expectations of trying to make people understand what it might feel like to be mentally ill (even if just for a moment). In this regard the work was a complete failure as it’s too entertaining for such a complex topic.
People were entertained to see themselves on TV, which (surprisingly to me at the time) overpowered the response of seeing themselves on fire. In the second version of the work I tried a number of different things to try to get people to see more than just themselves. For example the work freezes an image of the viewers while they were not seeing the image creating a series of candid snapshots (i.e. they cannot pose because they do not see themselves as in a mirror). And then a short time later this candid snapshot would appear with the viewers frozen image on fire. This delaying process confronted the viewers more than the live flaming image.
I think that for this project the time differences between the digital space and the physical space were fundamentally more important than the image distortions in making the viewer aware of the digital space defined by the computer program and electronic processing.
Moreover, I think that for these kinds of works there is a psychological projection that happens where the viewers project attributes of life onto or into the work. Because there was a virtual woman in the digital space in this work there is a confusion as to where the viewers project onto or into. Do they project into the woman or into the screen or into image or into the box or into the program?

Many of my earlier created artworks were based on ideas that I started to work with in "Hallucination". Particularly I continued to explore ways of using time and delay and memory to disrupt the immediate feedback problem of cctv interactivity (e.g. people waving at their own image). "Memory/ Recollection", "Digital Watch" and "Ruins of Light" were 3 of my works that grew out of Hallucination.
(Jim Campbell)

Sekundärliteratur

• Morse, Margaret: "Threshold Experiences: Incendiary Bodies and Frail Machines". In: "Jim Campbell: Transforming Time, Electronic Works 1990-1999". Catalogue of the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe 1999.
• Marchessault, Janine: "Incorporating the Gaze"; in: Parachute Contemporary Art Magazine No. 65 (The Immaterial Body II), 1st Quarter, Montreal 1992.