Vienna Riders

In 2015 I was immersed in a project of translating video to stills, and vice versa, the latter in the form of timelapse videos. I was using several methods of creating these hybrid images, including computerized algorithms, scanning and printing. I called it “Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” as a contemporary re-interpretation of Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

This particular project was focused on clandestinely video recording riders on Vienna’s public transportation system, (buses, trams, subways, and suburban trains) totaling 70 hours, and then applying algorithms to the footage to create thousands of unique images, albeit much of the consecutive creations being somewhat similar. Conversely in one project, I took over 11,000 selfies out of a batch of many more to create a five time lapse video of me spinning across Western Europe.

In brief, what we are seeing in these tableaux are stills representing several seconds of time, where as time proceeds the image captures the movements of both vehicles and the individuals in them.