The Written Passage

Interactive Installation

Video link documentation  / https://vimeo.com/74478582

The Written Passage is based on a found journal written by “Damian”. I found the journal in an antique store near Charlottesville in 2007. Without dates or geographic references, the journal's random entries describe and narrate the effects of the author's schizophrenia. In the journal, Damian describes a lengthy personal process he created to mask the voices he was hearing through memorizing and repeating definitions from encyclopedias. Later in the journal he described the voices becoming louder and, in order to suppress them, Damian start ed constructing elaborate scenes from cutouts of the encyclopedias to occupy his thoughts and shelter himself within utopian ideas and fantastic narratives. Damian left a few notes about a movie he was dreaming of making with the cutouts.

The Written Passage is an installation that utilizes a programmed computer that randomly triggers the 5 cameras installed around the cutouts. The program also displays text from the journal and the music is generated by a midi system that creates musical notes based on the amount of light available (input through the cameras). When all of these elements are combined, they create a projection of a film narrative of the construction of a parallel universe based on the cutouts of the encyclopedias.