By Douglas John Imbrogno | april14.2023 | TheStoryIsTheThing.com
Still fun after all these years. On my timeline this morning, Facebook surfaced a video I did with a dear friend, Albert Frank Perrone, and my elder brother, David Imbrogno, from an encounter we had in 2013 with the truly cool, interactive video installation ‘Text Rain,’ at the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, Ky. As you stand in front of a camera screen, text ‘rains’ down upon you with words from a poem, which assemble on the shape of your body. I added a killer soundtrack from Lucas the Flow, titled “Hyperdrive.”
This engrossing 1999 video installation piece using projection software was a work by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv. The alphabet cascade of letters cleverly form lines from a poem by Evan Zimroth. The letters drop onto whatever human shape is picked up by a camera in the center of the piece. In the words of the installation wall plaque: “Reading the phrases in Text Rain becomes a physical as well as a cerebral endeavor.”
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Note that since the installation was in a public space in the exhibit space of this ‘art hotel,’ you will notice people passing by, plus kids wishing to be part of the action by jumping into the scene. All the more fun, as a result.
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