Seen (2002)

part of David Rokeby: Silicon Remembers Carbon

Footage from Venice's Piazza San Marco was processed in four different ways: moving elements - people and pigeons - were removed from the architecture; the movement trajectories were tracked and rendered; images are layered onto themselves to create clouds of movement; architectural, static elements appear empty of any movement. This painterly look on reality invites the viewer to reflect on shared social spaces.

"This explains our attraction to optical illusions and mind-altering experiences (chemically-induced or not). Those moments of confusion, where identification and resolution aren’t immediate, give us a flash of the raw experience of being… It’s only when our conventional way of dealing with things breaks down that we can adopt another model, another way of imagining and experiencing a scenario.“