Persistence in Foreground
Masters of Design Thesis Exhibition
February 1-28. 2002
Platform 2
Campbell Arcade, Flinders Street Station
Melbourne, Australia
Envisage an electric display screen within public transport hubs creating a nexus for the dissemination
of information that is synchronised with the flow of human movement. Commuters grasp relevant content
streaming along walls using their peripheral vision. As an improvement on existing wall-based information
systems where people’s movement is hindered by the need to stop and search for information, this installation
proposed to maintain commuters’ flow of movement while they gain information that is important to carrying out
their day-to-day activities. Installed from February 1 to February 29, 2002, Persistence in Foreground:
A Prototype Web-Based Information Board was an installation demonstrating a prototype for an information
display. It was located in the Campbell Arcade, an underground thoroughfare that leads people from the train
platforms to the streets opposite Melbourne’s Flinders Street train station. |
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In the Campbell Arcade installation there was a second level of content - video footage of individuals walking/running
in a fitness gym. With five display cases, two levels of content were displayed on the west wall, and rear projected onto
polyvinyl screens. The first was scrolling information bytes; the second was footage of five individuals, one per screen,
walking/running on treadmills in a fitness gym.
Within the five screens, five anonymous people are walking/running in a fitness gym. Two women and three men from
various cultural backgrounds face the video camera. Their faces are framed from upper torso or bust up to eliminate any
environmental information outside the camera’s frame, including the treadmill on which they move. This framing echoed
the still images of the Chuo Line and the Sandringham Line video. The effect was to focus the audience’s attention on
facial characteristics of the anonymous individuals. With the camera focused on them for one hour (no editing in post-
production), the men and women’s gaze penetrates the lens into the eyes of the viewer. The viewer experiences the slow
metabolic changes of sweat forming on their foreheads, their eyes dilating, and breath shortening. Their physiological
changes are witnessed in real-time before our eyes. At the end of an hour, each individual dismounts the treadmill, only to
immediately return, magically fresh to begin walking again, as the video’s loop playing mode keeps the characters in a
never-ending exercise routine.
The Setting and the Anticipation from a Treadmill
Unlike the interior of a train, the Campbell Arcade is a fixed environment. It replicated the interior of a train carriage
by means of the openings of the display cases would negate the arcade’s actual physical space. Hence, the gym was
chosen for two reasons. The first was I required an environment, like the train carriage, that would put individuals in
motion without actually taking them anywhere; the treadmill in a gym was ideal. Secondly, the relationship of people
walking through Campbell Arcade with individuals walking/running on treadmills generated a psychological
juxtaposition with the commuters. As they walk past the projected displays, they gaze at individuals walking/running
who, in turn, watch the commuters. This strategy is also at work in the Chuo Line & Sandringham Line projects. When
these projects were juxtaposed against one another, the reflective engagement of gazing at anonymous individuals in
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Tokyo and Melbourne revealed one environment that generated an imposed emotion of Anticipation, while the other
environment responded to the emotions expressed on the faces of fellow travellers. Hence, Anticipation was rooted in
the Tokyo. Persistence in Foreground: A Prototype Web-Based Information Board revisited the spatial relationship of
viewer and subject constructed by the seating arrangement of Tokyo trains and subways. In Tokyo, I sat on one side of
the train carriage moving through the city. I gazed at the faces of fellow commuters who were stationary yet in transit.
They returned the gaze looking through me, without recognition of my presence. A psychology of inner space was
transposed from me onto the unknown subject: their face filled my visual foreground. The physical experience was
one of surface. I gazed with the faces of fellow commuters, which formed the foreground of my emotional
predisposition. The gym footage provided a means to simulate this experience ‘of the gaze’ in Melbourne.
However, a number of questions remain regarding the possible psychological or emotional interaction between the
commuter and the individuals walking/running in the gym. As the commuter walks along one side of the arcade, they
gaze at faces of individuals projected on the walls who also are walking but yet stationary. The individuals on the
treadmills return the gaze but look through the commuter, giving no recognition of their presence. Did this create a
situation whereby the commuter and the individual on the treadmill were linked in a psychology of mutually inclusive
inner space? Observing this relationship, passing individuals made comments such as, ‘Is this video live?’ ‘Do these
people known they are being videoed?’ This indicated a psychological tension was being generated, as the passing
audience was unsettled by gazing on what they perceived to be unknowing participants of public display. This
demonstrated that the environment of a thoroughfare contains a different psychological environment as it relates to
gazing at other individuals than to the train carriage. Therefore, what is it to gaze at an individual who stares directly
back unacknowledged in your presence while both are in the midst of waiting for one’s train stop? Ultimately, this
leads to questions about the cultural issues of public and private notions of voyeurism.
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