Lighthouse, 2002, Roving Video Projection, 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound Track

This installation is comprised of a roving video projection that was shot within a highly manicured garden at locations that coincided with the position of the benches.  The video travels back and forth in a panoramic format, slowly scanning across the garden at night.  The video is then placed in the gallery on a roving video projection head that also tracks back and forth. The recording and the projection coincide such a way that it appears as if we are seeing through the gallery walls to reveal live vignettes from the garden on the other side as the projection slowly pans across the room.  At the same time there is a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound soundtrack made from field recordings at the location.

“Presented as it is in the exhibition, Lighthouse creates a complex environment in which sound and image function with a duality characteristic of Home and Garden. Playing to our desire for unfettered immersion in the natural environment, Wright presents the ambient garden noise as surround sound. In support of this recreated experience, the projected panoramas have the illuminating effect of a spotlight, a visual aid to help one see what might otherwise go unseen, as though the light of the projector allowed one to see beyond the walls of the gallery. Simultaneously, Wright’s installation might be experienced in another way. The projection unit used in Lighthouse pans with the same restricted range of motion with which the video was recorded, mimicking the field of vision determined by sitting on a bench. With the frame of the projected image moving across the visible interior of the gallery, it becomes clear that the projection is not just light, but organized light, and a predetermined image comes to the fore. As the walls of the gallery that act as a permeable membrane to the outside world suddenly go opaque, the immersive sound environment of Lighthouse becomes as partial as its images, and the curtains are pulled back on Oz.”

-Kim Simon
(read the entire essay about the exhibition Home and Garden here)