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Beloff, Zoe

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https://hdl.handle.net/1813/3822

In a playful spirit of philosophical inquiry, my work explores the paradoxes of technology, desire and the paranormal posed since the birth of mechanical reproduction. I aim to reinvest contemporary technology with a sense of magic that inspired its creators a hundred years ago.

I work with a variety of forms of the moving image; film, live 3D projection performance, interactive cinema on CD-ROM and installation. I think not only about the telling stories that involve the audience in new ways but how the projection apparatus itself creates meaning and shapes our understanding. Much of my art is not something I send away. Instead I travel to perform and present it. I think of myself akin to the showman in the vaudeville era that toured with his projector.

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Recent Submissions

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    Artist Documentation: The Influencing Machine of Miss. Natalijaa
    Beloff, Zoe (2006-11-15T15:23:25Z)
    THE INFLUENCING MACHINE is an interactive installation based on a case history by the psychoanalyst and early follower of Freud, Victor Tausk. In 1919, Natalija A., a former student of philosophy came to Tausk complaining that a bizarre electrical apparatus, which she believed was operated secretly by physicians in Berlin, was manipulating her thoughts. The project attempts to materialize Natalijars hallucinations for the viewer while at the same time alluding to the development of real influencing machines, in the form of radio and television in pre WWII Germany. The installation consists of a large stereoscopic diagram inspired by the mechanics of early television. (The enclosed red/green diagram is a small demo version.) The participant, wearing 3D glasses, looks down at it. Now they see an actual threedimensional structure. They touch a designated space in this virtual machine with a pointer, all at once movies simulating Natalija's hallucinations appear as projected video clips on a small screen suspended within the space of the diagram. The user takes the pointer away and the projection vanishes. From the moment they don the glasses, the participant enters into a virtual world invisible to those around them, very much as one would when actually hallucinating, (See enclosed tape for a sample of the video).
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    Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal
    Beloff, Zoe (2006-11-15T15:13:55Z)
    The installation will be a reenactment of five seances held between 1910 and 1914 that took place in Paris with a young medium referred to as Eva C. Just as Eva wreaked havoc on perception of the sitters, in a playful way I as a modern 'cinematic medium' aim to reintroduce a sense of magic and the uncanny into the perception of contemporary technology. To conjure up characters from the past, I plan to create life size stereoscopic black and white video projections that appear in different places around a room. Infra-red sensors and software will enable these video phantoms to react to the presence and position of the viewers.