VR headset, digital projection, 4.1 audio, translucent screen. Variable duration and size.

What is a cinema without images? What are the sensorial conditions of vision? In Parallax expands the traditional architectural space of film by doubling the in-real-life (IRL) gallery screen via a complementary virtual reality (VR) experience. The resulting parallax centralises the viewer in the space between IRL and VR, suspending them amidst two possible viewings of an interconnected but differently realised work.

Inspired by Spanish film artist and inventor José Val del Omar’s evocative concept of the “apanoramic overflow” of the screen (in which the image spills out onto walls, floor, even audience), the installation questions the fixed position of the viewer. In Parallax brings both the device and the body to a purely sensory cinematic experience. Letting visitors move freely around (or, in VR, penetrate) the screen while feeling sound intimately and collectively, the installation is a playful inquiry into how we see objects and experience the world from different perspectives.

Team

• Sally Golding
• Tim Cowlishaw
• James Backhouse

Funded by

Commissioned by the Museum of the Moving Image, New York City, for ‘Cinema of Sensations: The Never-Ending Screen of Val del Omar’ 10 March - 1 October 2023.

Produced and presented with the generous support of the Australia Council for the Arts, ArtsACT, and the Australian Consulate-General, New York.

Curated by

Almudena Escobar López