Zoosphere, a multi-channel video installation with sound

March 12 - April 17, 2010
Opening: Friday, March 12, 6-8 pm, 2010
Diverseworks Artspace, Houston

Allison Hunter’s Zoo-space is a transcendent, site-specific installation investigating humankind’s relationship to the natural world. In her first ever immersive video installation, Hunter upends the power dynamic between the human and non-human animal within a dark, mazelike environment in which man and beast co-mingle. Against the backdrop of a rapidly shifting ecological landscape in which species across the globe are threatened with extinction, Zoo-space reconnects humanity with the beauty and wonder of the animal kingdom and forces us to examine our relationship with and responsibility to it.

Statement

Zoosphere is a multi-channel audio-visual installation where zoo animals are virtually relocated in a different kind of captivity: the gallery space. The exhibition is lit only by video projections depicting life-size zoo animals freed from their habitats through digital manipulation. Unlike at a real zoo, there is no map or guide or predictable enclosure. Rather than viewers coming upon enclosed animals where they may be predictably found, the animals come upon the viewer unexpectedly, appearing and disappearing randomly throughout the installation space.  

The walk-through environment encourages an active rather than passive engagement with the art showing the vitality of the animal subjects as living creatures moving in time—a dynamism not possible in the static mediums of photography or sculpture. It also makes possible a more dynamic encounter with animal life than what we experience at a traditional zoo. The conventions of display and the “infotainment” nature of many modern zoos exert a deadening effect on our experience of these animals. We see them, but we don’t see them. And yet the animals here are digitally projected while those we encounter in zoos are flesh and blood. This project thus raises questions about where and how to locate the reality of our relations with our fellow creatures, and it invites the viewer to speculate on the parallels between the conventions of display in the modern zoo as well as the contemporary gallery and museum space.

Zoosphere represents Hunter’s latest project in an ongoing exploration of cultural attitudes by examining man-made environments and then manipulating them to disclose the virtual worlds they create. Hunter’s technique involves shooting analog film on location and processing it on the computer. One advantage to digital processing is the ability to spend more time looking at and learning from the animal subjects after a photo shoot on location. “During the many hours working on the computer, I contemplate the beauty and grace of these captive animals saved from extinction yet destined to live out their days in captivity. I also discover details of their physical beauty that I missed when I was at the zoo. In some ways,” Hunter says, “I see the subject fully for the first time.” What would others do, Hunter’s art asks, if they too took the time to really look at these wondrous creatures around us?