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ORKA  1997

A PROJECTED VIDEO ENVIRONMENT BY STEINA
STEINA: “My background is in music. For me, it is the sound that leads me into the image. Every image has its own sound and in it I attempt to capture something flowing and living. I apply the same principle to art as to playing the violin: with the same attitude of continuous practice, the same concept of composition.
“Since my art schooling was in music, I do not think of images as stills, but always as motion. My video images primarily hinge upon an undefined sense of time with no earth gravity. It is like a duty to show what cannot be seen except with the eye of media: water flowing uphill or sideways, upside down rolling seas or a weather beaten drop of a glacier melt. “The idea is that perhaps the audience could feel a part of this creative trance, living for a moment in a mental world where they have never been.”
— Steina
 
D E S C R I P T I O N
In ORKA, a three-channel video environment, the three disk players provide one video and two audio sources to three projectors and six speakers. A video synchronizer aligns the three channels for synchronous playback. At the end of each fifteen-minute cycle, the program automatically returns and re-synchronizes for a repeat performance.
The images in Orka — which means “life force” — were shot by Steina in the wilds of her native Iceland in 1996. A “tracer” device performs recording of the traces of the micro-movements of nature over time, such as the paths of birds and waves.