Black/White/Text

1980 • Directed by

Gary Hill

Using the phenomenon of inverted (or negative) video feedback, this work constructs a one-to-one correspondence between recited text and image. Black and white rectangles, embedded one within another against a black background, are generated through a closed-circuit system: a camera’s signal is inverted and displayed on a monitor that the same camera is framing. The camera, as it were, sees itself seeing itself seeing itself and so on. (It’s the inversion itself that produces the alternating black and white rectangles). The number of rectangles is based on a precise score involving seven channels of chanted text (all in the voice of the artist)—a kind of “language canon.”