Beyond the Image
2004/2006
Beyond the Image is a five-channel surround-sound installation in which interviews with anonymous participants are fragmented and collaged to explore the influence family has on individual identity. Viewers pass through a curtain into a small, private room about the size and shape of a dining room table, where they experience the installation in complete darkness. Four speakers are mounted on the walls just above viewers’ heads in the arrangement of family members around a dining table: mother and father at opposite ends and brother and sister on opposite sides. A fifth speaker, representing the self as narrator, is suspended over the center.
Beyond the Image (excerpt)
As the audio progresses, participants move from discussing their family as a unit to individual family members to more personal stories about their own experiences within the family. The participants’ voices move among the corresponding speakers according to whom they are discussing, defining the room’s size and shape through sound. Because the room is completely dark and the individual stories are fragmented into a collective response, viewers are left to assemble the image in their minds from what they hear and the memories and experiences they bring with them.