Presto!
2017
Digital animations projected from a roving vehicle, Portland Oregon
Commissioned and presented by Converge 45
Curated by Kristy Edmunds
A magician exploits our impulse to look at the obvious while the real action is happening somewhere else. Understanding our level of attention and awareness is a key to a magician’s misdirection.
Presto! is a series of animations commissioned by and presented at Converge 45, an annual event in Portland Oregon. Using a projector mounted to a roving vehicle, the animations were shown on buildings and structures throughout Portland.
The looped animations in the series are born from a conflation of hand gestures taken from sleight of hand tricks, with isolated gestures from speeches made by the 45th president. By presenting these works of close magic at a large scale in the public realm, I am interested in exploring the tension between individual, intimate gestures and larger civic ambitions.
I am making them free and available in the hopes that they will be live on in cities beyond Portland. The group of six animations are available on Vimeo to download via the link below.
Download Presto! Animations here.
Photo by Mario Gallucci.
Images from the Presto! animations.
Presto projected onto the Portland Museum of Art, August 2017. Photo by Gary Gilbert.
Photo by Gary Gilbert