Danielle Roney

.03854, 2005

With globalization being at the forefront of artistic convergence, my installations attempt to make the intangible macro reality of the world become tangible. .03854 is a reflection of my use of the distorted self-image and a scientific interest in our perception of reality. While conceptually introducing the viewer to a more abstract self-image, numerous simultaneous views also examine my own presence in the duality of locations while working in Beijing, China.

My work often compares the micro sensibility in our mind with the macro interpretation beyond our visual capacity. Breaking down the image to pure time, light, and motion, the video projection transports a coexisting moment of real life experience here in Beijing with a montage of sound journeys. This light and motion can travel to Atlanta in .03854 seconds, highlighting the elemental breakdown of each moment, person, and place within a much larger universe.

The psychological attachments to our body can be abstract and manipulated into larger meaning and metaphors. The ideas of metaphysical bodies, transposing worldly attachment exemplify the natural elemental releases and spiritual journeys where the mind can be expanded. The viewer has been allowed, in my interpretation, to become the "body". The public body is my interest with interactivity allowing public intimacy and shared experience to become a strengthening common denominator among people. 

Together we are moments of time in a much larger place, just a gleam of light and once the image of ourselves is changed, we can understand the fragility and strength of being alive in the universe. That place is relevant yet not defining. I too strive to understand the simultaneity happening in our world without the day-to-day blinders.

The video produced in Beijing is a montage of clips from a night out in the city's Tiananmen Square, some night markets and an abstract depiction of traveling through the city on such a simple task as riding home at the end of the night. The piece relays a more normal street experience among people that then gradually grows more surreal as the journey of traveling becomes abstract visions of lights moving in the darkness. The soundtrack is also a montage of the white noise of traffic, people crowded together in the markets along with some amazing pieces of musical interplay found on the journey. This part really represents the constants in the day-to-day audio experience and does not vary much by place or time. The language may change but the rhythms, tones, and use of song remain a common link.