matthewsloly.com/crystal_springs.html Home | CV | Links | Contact Crystal Springs 1996, Video-loop, 16 minute cycle (this demo version is condensed to 1 minute), dimensions variable, collection of the NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA (Click image to view QuickTime movie) This is a picture of the real touching and being touched by, reflecting and being reflected by, the illusory, both taking their appearance from the other. An offshoot of MORPHOLOGICAL PUMP, this piece does not use any digital effects. A video camera was set up to shoot my TV through the bottom of a Crystal Springs water bottle. The dimple or navel in the base of the bottle (marking its derivation from raw material through the industrial process in which it was endowed with a form particular to its function), is reflected below the surface of the water inside the bottle. This is a picture of multiple levels of information reflected, refracted, and reiterated within and through artefacts of their own mediation. The water in the bottle is disturbed as people dance near by, further distorting the refracted light. Thus pictured, this material/immaterial object facilitates visual access to its surroundings by warping the space beyond its frame around itself, recontextualizing and abstracting this information into a de-anthropomorphized gestalt figuration of a peripheral cum central human activity. As the camera zooms progressively through layers of transparency and reflection, into the flickering images played across the TV screen, the fluid structure of mediation is thus made explicit even as it devolves into a play of light and shadow.