Split Time Mystery, 1991
Site-specific installation
Seven modified 25-inch black-and-white video monitors, wooden cabinet, one-in by seven-out computer-controlled video switcher, computer, time code reader, one U-matic videocassette player and one U-matic videocassette
Dimensions variable
Unique (site-specific)
Split Time Mystery was conceived as a site-specific installation for the metro system in Vienna. The work was located on the internal front wall of a station entrance and was centered between two sets of stairs leading to the respective directional platforms. Improvised scenes from the Stadtpark in Vienna are seen as rhythmically pulsating images on a horizontal row of seven monitors. Akin to a zeotrope, the pulsating images mimic vision through the windows of a train as seen from the metro platform. Each scene retains an unedited autonomy while at the same time suggesting the possibility of a larger narrative depending on the arrival or departure of the viewer. Technically, all these scenes are “woven” frame by frame on a single videotape and are then sequentially displayed on the monitors with varying time signatures by a computer-controlled video switcher.
Gary Hill: Selected Works and catalogue raisonné. Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2002, GHCR 69, pp. 156.
This site-specific temporary installation was produced for the Vienna subway system as part of the exhibition “topographic II: Untergrund,” part of the Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, Austria, September 27 – November 3, 1991.
Topographie II: Untergrund, Videoinstallations in the Vienna Subway System. Vienna: Wiener Festwochen, 1991, pp. 44, 65, 66, 82 – 85. (Including the artist’s description of Split Time Mystery, 1991.)
Nesweda, Peter. “Von Wohnsitz zum Schleudersitz.” Noëma Art Journal 37 (September/October 1991) p. 81.
Sarrazin, Stephen. Chimaera Monographe No. 10 (Gary Hill). Montbéliard, France: Centre International de Création Vidéo Montbéliard, Belfort, 1992, pp. 44, 45.
Watari, Shizuko. Gary Hill – I Believe It Is an Image. Tokyo: WATARI-UM, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992, unpaginated.
Morgan, Robert C., ed. Gary Hill. Baltimore: PAJ Books / The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, pp. 87, 88.
Gary Hill: Selected Works and catalogue raisonné. Wolfsburg: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2002, GHCR 69, pp. 156.