Anthony Mccall

Anthony McCall, Exploring Light

11/19/13

20th Century Art History

Erin Brown

Introduction: You and I Horizontal (II) is a piece made in 2006 by Anthony McCall. It is a vertical solid light installation with a quicktime movie file, video projector, and haze machine. The piece consists of a simple, non narrative movie being beamed onto the screen. Through this work, McCall was attempting to create sculptural cinema, and involve the audience in the film.

Formal analysis:

The composition of this piece consists of choreographed lines projected through smoke in a dark room. The solid, moving beams of light, shining through the smokey-mist, create a moving and interactive sculpture. This sculpture can change as viewers interact with the beams of light and the mist. As the viewers move through the space, small movements can be perceived in the mist. Also, every angle of viewing the work is different. Looking at the screen, the video seems to be of an animation, not unlike an early screensaver. But if the viewer moves towards the screen, the beams of light seem to be solid. And as the viewer stands at the screen, looking back towards the projector, the viewer can become surrounded by the darkness, and then watch as the sculpture slowly moves over their body, slowly absorbing it into the sculpture itself. The shape of the sculpture is evolving and changing. Therefore, negative space around the positive space of the white lines and beams is as important as the positive white lines and light beams.

The two lines projected onto the screen are curved, and as they float in space, they very rarely meet. One line is an open ellipse. The other is reminiscent of an s-curve. The background of the animation is black, and the two white lines are white. They move at a very slow speed, and the projection of these lines creates a thick perpendicular shape that drifts through the smoke.

The perspective of the light shining into the room emphasizes the idea that the artist is...