WILLIAMSTOWN, MA.- The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents David Rokeby: Taken, a multi-channel video installation by David Rokeby, noted Canadian media artist. Re-created specifically for the Media Field gallery, Taken features three live video images of the gallery space projected into gilded frames chosen from the WCMA collection. The exhibition transforms the gallery into a dynamic art space in which visitors are challenged to reconsider their physical relationship to the art they are viewing.
David Rokeby’s work explores the relationships between people and technology through interactive sound and video. His installations employ custom-designed software that constructs experiences for viewers by engaging the human body as a dynamic element. In the three-channel video projection, Taken, Rokeby creates a surveillance environment that captures the gallery visitors’ movements, repeating them at regular intervals, and projects them into three separate picture frames hung on the gallery walls. The results are visually chaotic, historically ordered image streams that serve as a map of the gallery through space as well as time.
This installation is active and engaging; visitors can recognize and locate their own images within the echoing projections of the gallery’s past activities. The installation provides a unique perspective of time, heightening awareness of the visitor’s relationship to the continuing history of the gallery space. This site-specific installation reveals Rokeby’s vision of the museum gallery as an historical and introspective viewing space.
David Rokeby: Taken has been organized by Cara Starke, MA ’05 from the Williams College Graduate Program in Art History, with Lisa Dorin, Assistant Curator.
About the Artist - David Rokeby has been creating interactive sound and video installations since the early 1980s. His innovative conceptual and critical approach to technology has earned him international acclaim, and he has exhibited his works extensively in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. His recent awards include Canada’s Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for distinguished career achievement, and Austria’s prestigious Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art; both awards were received in 2002. Rokeby recently represented Canada at the Venice Biennale 2002—8th International Architecture Exhibition and the XXVI São Paulo Bienal in 2004.
