by Jeff Thompson
(for the Exhibition "Stored and Filtered: Technology, Time, and Landscape" at Texas Firehouse in New York City)
Michael Aschauer's video "24/7" and the process by which the piece was created most directly embodies the relationsship between landscape and time. Using a technique calles slit-scan photography, Aschauer takes a series of still photographs of the ocean over course of one week, creating an at-once real and artificial re-creation of a place. Glittering artifacts remain from the process as shafts of color, a reminder that we are not looking out of the window but a new place created in the process. Filmed on the Greek island Syros and facing the direction of the point where the sun sets during the winter soltice, Aschauer layers historical, poetic and mathematical structures onto the seascape.
(Jeff Thompson)