Passway, 1998
Interactive installation
motion sensors, surveillance mirrors, lights, sound
music by Ross Goldstein

Passway is an interactive installation bridging physical with imaginary realities. As the viewer walks along a hallway, their movement triggers sensors to illuminate round mirrors.  Engravings of lissajous patterns (patterns that appear on the television screen when the tube is turned off) are etched into the silver of the mirrors. The signal is highlighted as a bridge between our physical and mental awareness of existing simultaneously in the ‘here’ and in the ‘there’. Consciousness of where we appear in the physical world and how we see ourselves appearing, parallels our transit through the corridor.

‘If you wait and watch hard enough your attention focuses on stationary life rather than life which is in constant motion. Frame by frame I watched the television picture extinguish, only to realize how media has altered our perception of reality. Like the reflection of a mirror, the illusion of life you see before you differ from what may exist in front of you. We learn to live vicariously through windows without ever noticing at what point did ‘on our way in ‘became ‘on our way out’. – Eng