Daniel Crooks Static No 7

Daniel Crooks began his ongoing Time Slice project in 1999, exploring alternative models of spatio-temporal representation through the moving image. One of the main threads of this investigation is the formal treatment of time as a spatial dimension, as a tangible and malleable material.

Time Slice is a series of videos and digital prints. Thin slices are extracted from a moving image stream and then recombined using temporal and spatial displacement. This technique is applied to both still and moving images and, while conceptually similar, the visual outcomes are quite distinct: photographs that progress through time and videos of frozen moments that move.

Both trigger a perceptual shift in our viewing of the space/time continuum, graphically revealing the underlying rhythms and patterns of the physical world and tracing the rhythms of our navigation through it. Though inherently digital, the images have the most beautifully organic qualities: images that are at once aesthetically and intellectually intriguing.

By using machines to work outside of real time Crooks aims to expose new modes of perception, breaking down the traditional correlation between time and space to imagine new ways of seeing. Precision motion control combined with sophisticated digital processing provides the freedom to explore alternative spatio- temporal representations, isolating and exaggerating the interwoven physical variables that construct perspective and motion. Further blurring the line between discrete and continuous, the monocular nodal perspective of the conventional camera is also disassembled and reconfigured across time to form extended polycular images.

The relationship between the width of the slice, the angle of view and the temporal resolution of the video determines the 'plane of cohesion' that distance from the camera where objects join seamlessly across slices to create an undistorted image (a kind of spatio-temporal depth of field). Also, due to the extremely narrow angle of view of each slice, the reconstructed image becomes almost two-dimensional, and without perspective takes on the qualities of a flattened isometric or 'polyocular' projection.

Information for students - issues / themes / art practice

For video artist Daniel Crooks time is the central issue to his work. In Static No 7 we see a distorted view of an empty beach as a wave washes in past us. The image has been manipulated so that the wave curves and moves in an unnatural and unexpected way. The sound of the wave has also been distorted and the natural sounds of the water and the sea washing across the sand take on a strange and mysterious quality.

As the video continues, the movement of the waves begins to emerge as a repetitive rhythm. The movement of the ocean wave begins to suggest another type of wave, a sound wave or a light wave as we might see it in a science text book. A natural pattern of sound and picture is revealed despite the intervention and distortion of the scene by the artist. Then, just as we begin to settle into this rhythm the sound of human voices begins to creep into the soundtrack. Like the natural sounds of the ocean and sand the human voices are distorted, ghost-like and eerie. We can't make out what is being said. We don't see the people, they don't walk into the frame and the camera doesn't move. Finally a voice lets out a strange cry and the video is finished. Daniel Crooks gives us no clues as to what might be going on behind the camera and we are left to ponder its possible meaning.

Daniel Crooks has achieved this dreamlike moment by slicing moving video footage and has then recombining it at slightly different points in time so that the images are displaced and distorted. This series of works is known as the Time Slice series and consists of videos and digital prints. It was started in 1999 and is an attempt by the artist to explore alternative methods of representing time and movement in video. According to Daniel Crooks: Both trigger a perceptual shift in our viewing of the space/time continuum, graphically revealing the underlying rhythms and patterns of the physical world and tracing the rhythms of our navigation through it. Though inherently digital, the images have the most beautifully organic qualities: images that are at once aesthetically and intellectually intriguing.

Tiny slices are extracted from a moving image stream like long thin vertical strips. Each strip is slightly ahead or behind the next. They are then assembled together to make up one normal sized video frame. The video frame may be made up of over one hundred tiny slices of time. This means that in a typical picture there may be a difference of up to four seconds between one part of the picture and another. Daniel Crooks refers to this process as 'temporal/ spatial displacement'. One of the main threads of this investigation is the formal treatment of time. We see how time may be sculpted in a tangible way.

Critical reviews / Quotes

"Time and motion dance to an otherworldly rhythm and lull us into a sophomoric state. With our field of vision completely immersed in the work, its stretchy conception of time seems to spill into the spaces we occupy in the gallery. Clearly nothing is behaving as we would normally anticipate it to but strangely as if hypnotized, we find ourselves accepting Crook's mobile model of duration. We become stuck in the elastic time of the work."

Nicholas Chambers, 'Daniel Crooks, Thoughts on Duration' in On perspective and Motion (part2), exhibition catalogue 2006, Anne Landa Award.

"By using machines to work outside of real time, Crooks aims to expose new modes of perception, breaking down the traditional correlation between time and space to imagine new ways of seeing."

Daniel Crooks, explanatory text 2007.