Moshe Mahler, Bum Lee, James Duesing, David Tinapple: Oral Fixations
Artist(s):
Title:
- Oral Fixations
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2005
Medium:
- Projected video
Category:
Artist Statement:
Oral Fixations is a single-channel video installation that evolves over a seven-hour time period. The project is a darkly humorous look at
a habit of endless consumption and the resulting accumulation of waste. A narrative gradually emerges from the on-screen action that depicts a large-mouthed character who dances while flossing its one protruding tooth. A conveyor belt regularly delivers factory-farm-fresh hams that the character delights in taking one large bite from and then tossing aside. Over the duration of the piece, the hams begin to pile up in the room until, after seven hours, the room is filled with the refuse of this gluttony. The viewer is encouraged to revisit the piece periodically throughout the day and see how the discarded hams build an oddly humorous environment of waste around the character. The length of this piece introduced several technical challenges: displaying changing images for seven hours at a constant frame rate and simulating the motion of seven hundred falling hams. Each iteration of the character’s motion was constructed using several technical elements. The animation of the character is motion capture data captured using a Vicon motion capture system with 12 MX-40 cameras. The motion capture data has been non-uniformly scaled in Maya to emphasize the action. The floss is a dynamic simulation created within Maya.
