“This and That” is an occasional series of paired observations. -Ed.
Today: Disaster Time
Last fall, the artist Jonathan Schipper made Cubicle, an installation at Rice Gallery of a nondescript office slowly collapsing onto itself. Schipper has done similar things with muscle cars crashing in super-slow motion and fusty living rooms slowly being sucked into a singularity.
San Antonio-based Walley Films created a short documentary about the show at Rice. At 2:50, you can see a time lapse of part of the movement, which actually occurred over a period of several months.
“Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In this strangely riveting video, we watch the Titanic sink in real time (tastefully — we don’t see the people, although we hear their shouts and screams).
As much as people enjoy time lapse video (where something that happens over a long period is sped up, like the construction of a skyscraper or the Schipper collapse), it’s equally if not more mesmerizing to watch Titanic slowly sink over the course of a nearly three hours.
These videos succeed through the pleasure of rubbernecking, the terrible fascination with inevitable horror, and the meditative state of mind of a stoned person watching a lava lamp, or Bob Ross.
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No matter how original, innovative or crazy your idea, someone else is also working on that idea. Furthermore, they are using notation very similar to yours. – Bruce J. MacLennan
