Melvile Library Gallery, Stony Brook University, September 10 – 18, 2006
The gallery is completely dark. At first, the experience is purely auditory: an ambient chord progression, a fetal heart beat, and faint, scattered voices speaking intermittently in various languages. As eyes slowly adjust, we begin to discern the composition of the space. There are sixteen framed images, photographs mounted on transparency film, suspended from the ceiling and arranged in a ‘seventeen-gon’ construction, with one door-like opening allowing entry to the installation’s center. Above each image, a small white light pulses along with the sound elements, below hangs a slightly burnt canvas onto which the images are projected as the bulbs light up from above. We realize that the various sounds emanate from small speakers mounted underneath the burned canvases, bouncing off the floor and creating a rich aural environment that fills the gallery space. After several minutes spent exploring the exterior of the installation and adjusting to the almost complete darkness, we find the entryway and move into the circular, womb-like space. Continue reading “Takafumi Ide: ‘Propagate’”