At First Sight II  |  Loading Dock - 1280 W Peachtree  |  Atlanta, GA, United States
(video + sound and photography Installation)
 
At first sight II was created as a multi-disciplinary project presented on three different platform: a book, a website and a photo-installation. Through photographs of melting and receding glaciers, this trilogy witnesses the immense environmental devastation that is occurring on our planet.
Drawn and sculpted by the ocean and the wind, these dramatic natural shapes immortalized by photography will never be captured again.
 
Not knowing for how long, is the mystery of time; at the crossroad where life and death meet and from a different perspective, these glacier images invite us to see what will no longer exist and what has already melted.
 
The intention of the series Glaciers is to revisit these environments as they melt into the past and project into the future questioning the public’s awareness of the importance of time, life and death.
 
Choosing a loading dock of 8,856 square feet and 177,120 cubic feet (825 square meters and 5775 cubic meters) as the site-specific and preserving it in its raw original condition (with a dumpster and the building’s equipment), the photo-installation opened its 14 ft. silver doors and closed them at midnight. It was comprised of 9 light boxes, 1 HD 47” LCD flat screen display and 2 speakers. The selection of the light boxes was to stress the awareness of time, in terms of the life of each image and how the images disappeared during the period when the light was turned off after the event. The light became a key element not only to reproduce the images. The absence of light in the entire space created the mood for the audience in the otherwise dark space. The objective of the screen that was the same size as the light panels was to present a closed-loop video of all the individual images included in the book. In addition, I decided to fill the space with a particular sound. The idea was born from the non-stop sound of nature and the glaciers that were always screaming. This sound was mixed with the industrial sound of the loading dock, allowing the audience to leave the space with a silent beat in their minds.
 
After the 6 hours photo-installation, the space returned to a loading dock, without any evidence of the event having occurred. Everything was gone, as were the images of icebergs that have now also vanished.
 
After the website was launched, the photo-installation ended and the book was sold out, At first sight II is shifting to a different phase in the same manner as the glaciers are. Never again in the same setting, the series Glaciers will be presented in different scenarios. The disappearing is what will stay in our memory and is what makes us see things from a different perspective.
At first sight is an ongoing project in which each different phase is envisioned on a search to discover the senses through the emotions of a first glance. It is a meeting of the senses produced by facing the unpredictable.