PASSWAY, 1998

Installation by Angie Eng
audio by Ross Goldstein

Anna Kustera Gallery, New York 1998

Passway is a site specific installation bridging the physical with the imaginary realities using reflectors, light, audio and motion sensors.

As the viewer walks along a hallway, their passage triggers motion sensors to illuminate round reflectors on the wall. Engravings of video stills of lissajous patterns from the brief moment when the television tube is turned off are etched into the silver of the reflectors. The signal responds as a bridge between our physical and mental awareness of existing simultaneously in the 'here' and in the 'there'. Conciousness of where we appear in the physical world and how we see ourselves appearing parallels our transit through the corridor.

'If you wait and watch hard enough your attention focuses on stationary life rather than life which is in constant motion. Frame by frame I watched the television picture extinguish, only to realize how media has altered our perception of reality. LIke the reflection of a mirror, the illusion of life you see before you differs from what may exist in front of you. We learn to live vicariously through windows without ever noticing at what point did 'on our way in 'became 'on our way out'. - Eng








Before I could take the matter in hand, the elevator doors opened. No warning,no sound, they just slid open to either side. I was concentrating so hard on the critical recount that I didn't even notice. Or more precisely, my eyes had seen the opening doors, but I didn't fully grasp the significane of the event. OF course, the doors' opening meant the linking of two spaces previously denied accessibility continuity by means of those very doors. And at the same time, it meant the elevator had reached its destination.

-Haruki Murakami
Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World