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PTOLEMY 1990

A VIDEO MATRIX BY STEINA
PTOLEMY borrows the cast of characters from the Machine Vision series. The camera circles inside and outside a series of reflective spheres. The space, now condensed into small image/objects, begins its orbit around the center, the camera. The boundaries of the camera on an extended and orbiting arm delineates this world of circular movements — a dance of machine with ordinary objects in a mechanized choreography. The sound of motors and gears is piped through various processors adding to the surrealistic quality of this machine performance.
— WOODY VASULKA
 
D E S C R I P T I O N
PTOLEMY is a four video, eight audio channel installation with a ten minute repeating program. Each of the four video disk players provides one video and two audio sources to 16 video monitors and eight speakers. A video synchronizer aligns the four channels of video for synchronous playback. At the end of each cycle the program automatically returns and re-synchronizes for a repeat performance.