Antonio Roberts

On Halloween, as well as the Brill Drummond talk (see what I did there) at Eastside Projects and the closing party at Ikon Eastside I went to the screening of 24 Hour Psycho at VIVID Gallery, which is just a few moments away from it.

I was there for about an hour and in that time I probably saw the result of only 5 minutes of footage! As is my understanding the film was shown at one frame every half-second. What I find interesting is that if this was shown using a traditional reel of film you’d have to have 12 frames of the same picture followed by another twelve frames of another still picture, thus creating the effect of playing two frames per second. However, due to the absence of noise that would usually come from the projector I’d guess it is a digital projection and because of it with each frame you get slight pixelation in each frame. I would’ve liked to have seen it being projected using reels of film, which then presents the screening of the actual movie as a performance in itself. After doing some research, however, I can see that this wasn’t really the intention of the artist.

He [Douglas Gordon] went on to imagine that this ‹someone› might suddenly remember what they had seen earlier that day, later that night; perhaps at around 10 o’clock, ordering drinks in a crowded bar with friends, or somewhere else in the city, perhaps very late at night, just as the ‹someone› is undressing to go to bed, they may turn their head to the pillow and start to think about what they had seen that day.

I suppose you only really get that effect if you actually do watch it for awhile, and possibly at some of the more interesting parts of the film. That said, the image of someone smiling at me walking across the street is one that is still sticking with me.