Grahame Weinbren

FRAMES: Architecture and Technology

Entering the exhibition space, one sees three empty picture frames suspended
from the ceiling. The frames are hung vertically (as in portrait, not landscape
format) and 10 feet or so behind each one there is a screen. Wire cables connect
the corners of each frame to the corners of its corresponding screen, defining a
perspectival space. The three frames are arranged to form a kind of proscenium
stage, so that there are gaps between them and enough space in front of them to
accommodate three individual viewers. The three video images, therefore,
together make what might be a single discontinuous image.

The frames are placed in front of the screens so that if one stands directly in front
of any of the frames, it functions visually as a border to the image behind it-i.e. it
frames the image. The impression is that the images have been removed from their
frames, enlarged, and set back directly behind them.

Infra-red beam grids are mounted inside each frame, so that pointing through a
frame is detectable by a computer. In fact the interactivity of FRAMES is predicated
on viewers triggering change in the images by pointing at them. The technology is
based on a similar system, incorporating a single frame with a projection system,
that I used in an installation of an earlier work, Sonata. (The installation was
commissioned for the Bonn Kunsthalle, and subsequently exhibited at the Zurich
Museum of Design.)