What makes people want to document their lives, obsessively updating personal artifacts, constantly looking at the past through the eyes of a collector? What sort of story emerges from those objects left behind? What makes video (especially analog video) so reflective of memory? Can the video image that represents memory actually supplant memory, colored by the characteristics of that medium (blurriness, blippiness, dull muted colors, video artifacts)?
Portrait of a memory in vhs is a video sculpture that shows the image of a 12 year-old girl projected through and reflected off of several different layers of surfaces. This girl is presented in the realm of abstraction: her image represents a memory or may be an extension of the past as an idea. This "ideal" state and her pure nature is also reflected in sound: three simple musical bell tones repeat, gentle suggestions of memory... The girl is from a different era, a more “analog” era– the 80s, the time of VHS video. With different iterations this memory becomes distorted or less defined, each impression reflects or influences the other and each image (or memory) takes on different qualities, different textures, and begins to take on a different form.
Portrait of a memory in vhs is meant to be looked at from a distance of 6-12 feet, where someone can take in the overall look of the effect of the projection, with all the layers of the projection surfaces together. Then, as a secondary item, the reflection from all the projection surfaces runs across the ceiling in different ghostly grids and sea-like shapes of bright light. People are drawn in and walk around the installation in order to see the projection surfaces from many different angles. In order to further illustrate the elusiveness and detrimental quality of memory, as people approach the sculpture the amount of "noise" and "blippiness" will increase (through the use of proximity sensors and Max/MSP/Jitter), ultimately rendering this memory as unattainable...
