Entering the darkened room, the viewer is confronted with a huge screen of ‘white noise’ on the opposite wall, a familiar sight from the era of black and white cathode ray televisions. The field of vision flickers with a meaningless lava of fragmented, blindingly white and pitch-black stripes, which one might inevitably associate with the ‘broadcast error’ of the time or the untuned video signal of a later era. The low hum and crackle of the sound only reinforces this association. We are increasingly caught up in a dazzling optical effect and a confusing, unidentifiable and mesmerising situation as we approach what appears to be a projected field of light. As we get closer, we realise that the screen is actually an opening in the wall, into which a huge amount of unspooled videotape has been stretched horizontally. It is vibrated by air currents generated by hidden fans, transforming the screen into a huge vibrating surface. The installation uses the obsolete analogue medium of video tape to formulate a fascinating visual enigma, redefining the image-space in its material reality through the virtual expansion of space instead of the virtual image.

Barnabás Bencsik