Taree Mackenzie
In Slinky Live Feed (2011), Taree Mackenzie creates a visually entrancing abstract image and then shows us how she makes it, by metaphorically taking us behind the scenes. Upon encountering the work our eye is immediately drawn to the mesmerising play of coloured lights and twirling shapes projected onto the wall. But we cannot fail to notice the unusual mechanised structure nearby; it seems connected to the large moving image, and to the three projectors on the wall, but it may take a few moments to work out how. It soon becomes clear that Mackenzie has invited us, figuratively speaking, behind the scenes, her intention being to ‘prompt viewers out of their habitual modes of looking’.1
Her ‘contraption’, as she calls it, contains three light-boxes with red, green and blue gels, colours chosen because they are the constituents of white light, and the foundation of the RGB colour model used in electronic displays.2 Above the light-boxes are three coiled spring toys known as Slinkys, which are activated by motors and gently move. Their undulations are recorded by video cameras suspended above the coloured light-boxes, which then relay images to the nearby projectors. The pulsating rainbow effect of the large projection is the surprising outcome of superimposing the three videos: the mixing of red, green and blue light creates new colours—pink, yellow, cyan and white—while a striking moiré pattern, reminiscent of 1960s Op Art,3 is created by the slightly out-of-register superimposition of the Slinkys’ coiled forms.
Mackenzie mixes coloured lights like a painter mixes pigments, but the outcomes are quite different, as she explains. ‘So when red, green and blue light are combined together they make white light. This really appeals to me as it seems counter intuitive to how we think about colour mixing, and it also seems a bit magical.’ Not sculptural in a conventional sense, Mackenzies’ light-mixing contraption has been built to fulfil a specific purpose; it is a clever DIY invention, and in a high-tech world where digital wizardry abounds, it is a refreshingly low-tech machine for making art. The two parts of the installation, both ‘back and front of house’, are equally important since, as Mackenzie notes, ‘the projection only exists through its relationship to the contraption’. Her principle objective is for the viewer to make the conceptual connection between the two, since it is here that the real purpose of the work resides. The process set in train by Slinky Live Feed is scientific, but the perceptual experience that arises from it inspires a sense of wonder, which is only heightened by Mackenzie’s revelation of how the abstract forms are being made, and our realisation that this process is occurring in real time, right before our eyes.
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1 All quotes from Taree Mackenzie are from an email 26 January 2016.
2 See Wikipedia entry for ‘RGB Colour Model’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model [accessed 2 February 2016].
3 See the discussion of moiré effects in William C. Seitz, The Responsive Eye, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1965.
© Heide Museum of Modern Art 2016
