The Shock of the Still (1985)

Video tape and Installation with spectator interaction.

Photos: Jill Scott
Assistant: Cathie Vogan
Sponsorship: JVC Australia and The Video Paint Brush Company, Sydney.

Presented at: Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia, (c.1985)

The viewer is presented with a water filled well with a video image below it into which she can look. “I have often thought that there was a great similarity between the surface of video and that of water, as well as between the preoccupation with self-identity that both surfaces induce in us. When a viewer looked into the water, a hidden video camera displayed there a shot of his or her face which was superimposed in front of a very violent graphically drawn splash. … however when the viewer touches the surface of the water only the image of the viewer became distorted.”1

1Jill Scott, in Marille Hahne, (ed.) Jill Scott : Coded Characters, Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz (2003), 110.