Second Sight/Split Second brings together many of my various interests in art, science and the wonders of nature. Producing educational videos at MIT I have long been a fan of Doc Edgerton’s high-speed photographs and films. Last year I had an occasion to see a demo of the Edgerton’s labs high-speed video camera that led to the acquisition of the camera for this installation.
I am interested in exploring human gesture to look at what we think we understand from a different perspective. I was also interested in challenging notions and perceptions of time. I decided to film 1 second actions or gestures. These are recorded using the specialized Edgerton Camera and when played back take 3 minutes to see the single second in its entirety. There is an uncanniness to the images, an attraction/repulsion that can be hypnotic. I present the videos as individual pieces, almost as if it were a photo exhibit. The relationship between the stillness of the video images and the photographic images is also something that I am questioning. At what point it still really still?