Asleightofhand …

NATHAN POHIO, 2006 & 1999.
“Asleightofhandmaneuveringofastillimageintosomethingmoving: Horse 2 and Sleeper”
Artist Pages from The Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader, ed. Brennan and Ballard, 2008.

A video projection of a horse and a boy sleeping.

Nathan Pohio, Asleightofhandmaneuveringofastillimageintosomethingmoving: Horses 2, 2006, dual screen video projection, and Nathan Pohio, Sleeper, 1999, two-channel video, 3 minutes. In the early eighteenth century Edweard Muybridge used the most extraordinary technologies of the time to give still images the illusion of movement. One hundred and fifty years later, and after the cinema, the video, and the digital revolutions, Nathan Pohio reduces movement back into something realised by the human hand. Holding a lenticular photograph of horses in front of his camera Pohio reanimates the inanimate. In the dual screen projection Asleightofhandmaneuveringofastillimageintosomethingmoving: Horses 2, we see gentle blurred movements as running horses shift in and out of focus. This is cinema returned to its roots: tricks of the eye, illusions of movement, and the captivating magic of slow motion. Sleeper is an equally slow cinematic video. Movement is reduced to the flickering light of a surreal night sky. The artist’s nephew dreams beneath the day-glo lights of his decorated bedroom ceiling, to a soundtrack of Angel Corpus Christi’s Dream Baby Dream. A peaceful portrait, evoking the deep calm of watching a child sleep, Sleeper generates an awareness of the intimate lure of the screen. (Su Ballard, 2008)

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