Experimenting with old and new technologies to explore the performative and sculptural possibilities of moving-image installations, Glasgow-based artist Torsten Lauschmann mounted five disparate pieces in this AV Festival event to create a peculiarly cogent installation that unfolded in time, changing constantly as the pieces playfully interacted in an array of combinations. The individual works—including several projections, a digital player piano, and a snow machine—provided mechanical movement, sounds, and light integral to the overall effect. Lauschmann programmed certain aspects of the pieces to run continuously, while others were sequenced to occur at varying times, turning the installation into an ever-changing theatrical event as well as a collection of individual artworks.

For most of the time, the space was dark, lit only by the five pieces installed throughout the gallery. Dead Man’s Switch, 2008, a video projection, is a still-life image save for the flickering flame of a candle, which at a certain point is blown out, here triggering the gallery’s entire lighting system to turn on for a short time until a hand in the video relit the candle and the space darkened again for the cycle to recommence. In a less predictable sequence, The Coy Lover, 2011, comes to life dramatically: The flickering light of a loudly clacking 16-mm projector suddenly illuminates a Yamaha Disklavier that begins to play programmed compositions, while from a machine above, snow falls, landing on the keys as if it were magically playing the piano. In Sun for Five Nights, 2011, the artist plays with perspective and illusion. Five slide machines project solarized images of a figure “capturing” the sun: cupped between two hands, pinched between two fingers, or balanced in the palm of a hand. Owing to the reversal of tones from the solarization, the figures are pale and the sun is black. Time sequenced, the slides are projected at different angles but converge at a single point. Father’s Monocle, 2011, is a black-and-white digital projection of numbers floating in a void to form constantly changing patterns, generated by a mathematical program based on the separation, alignment, and cohesion displayed in the flocking behavior of birds, fish, and sheep. A rotating meniscus lens has been placed on a string in front of the projector. As the lens twists around, the convex and concave surfaces distort the digits, changing the perspective from blurred to sharp, elongated to precise. Tucked away in a far corner of the space, a monitor glowed. Stuntmen in Skirts, 2010, is a still image of stuntwoman Helen Gibson, an American film actress, rodeo performer, and trick rider. The image has been manipulated so that reflected light moves across the screen on a continuous loop.

An artist and filmmaker, as well as a musician who (in his VJ/DJ persona Slender Whiteman) busked his way around Europe with a fully solar-powered laptop sound system, Lauschmann imaginatively weaves together technologies as the fabric of his work, not as something separate to be cynical about or superficially dazzled by. In his hands, they are malleable, emergent. Symbolically, like magic, his art has the potential to dismantle the preconceived, conjuring possibilities for something new.

—Lauren Dyer Amazeen