Amanda Long

Amanda Long’s Portal is a live-feed video installation that explores the intersections between the body and the environment, and the magical and the real.

Using surveillance cameras to track the movements of visitors and surroundings, Portal inputs and processes live video through custom software and then reflects the effect back onto a imbedded screen. The smallest movements – even shifts in shadows – elicit visual feedback and become a conversation between the screen and the outside world.

The screen itself is embedded in a portal, installed as an extension of the park’s garden walls, amid flora and fauna. The installation creates an alternate universe, where the live feed converges into the surroundings, becoming at once the viewer and the viewed.

Long’s piece is intimate and self-referentially site-specific. In this respect, Portal does not simply reference the famous Lascaux caves in southern France, or Nam June Paik’s television gardens, but also the myth of Narcissus: how long can we stare at ourselves, without being self-aware?

Portal is no longer on view in the park. You can now view the project as an interactive video through your Chrome browser. This digital iteration of Portal functions similarly to the sculpture with directions for use available on the site, here:  www.portalrgb.org