Body Spaces Installation

Manchester Royal Infirmary

October 2000

 

 

 Various screens were arranged around the Outpatient's Lobby, hung from the ceiling and from an old-fashioned medical screen. People could moved around and through the screens. The Geometries video was projected onto the screens. One of these projections was a Quicktime Movie, and a Director script on an i-Mac controlled a radio mouse sown into one of the screens (see photo) which moved the film when the mouse button was depressed.

In addition to the screens, the installation created a pathway through the lounge - a continuous band tracing a wheelchair wheel around the space, and individual marks, tracing the footsteps of a walking person around the same circuit.

During the installation, the enthusiastic workshop participants guided visitors around this circuit, proudly displaying their work.

The pathway led to photos, shot by the residency participants, providing new angles on everyday objects in the lounge. Around these photos and objects, stories on coloured paper could be found, telling fantasy narratives inspired by these objects, imbuing them with a different and new life.

Sample Stories:

'The chairs in the waiting room are made comfy for people to sit on, by friendly ghosts sitting on them. If the chair is cold and hard, then it means a mean ghost is sitting on the chair.'

'Mainly at the weekend, the phones have ghosts flying out of mouth pieces and scaring off the patients and trying to give them poison when they are sleeping. Some of the patients die. The good ghosts on the chairs try to stop them from killing patients.'

'At night when everyone is in bed in the hospital, water comes up through the floor in the automatic door enclosure. The water brings fish with it, turning the enclosure into a massive fishbowl'

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The soundtrack for the installation was running as part of the video projections, but could also be manipulated via sensor pads, which would activate short soundbytes to weave into the soundscape.