Study for a Perfect Storm

“Study for A Perfect Storm” by Ryan Wolfe creates a visually and viscerally believable natural environment that blurs the parameters of a technological virtual experience with reality. In this participatory installation, the viewer's presence is the catalyst triggering a storm to blow across a quiet field of bamboo. The installation generates a more intense storm on its screens the longer the viewer wills it by remaining watching. The viewer has an active role in perpetuating the fantasy of rustling, silhouetted stalks gaining momentum as wind rises across a series of monitors that act as windows onto this familiar yet fantastical world. Video's inherent limitations as a medium of documenting events - that even while being recorded are inherently already moments past - are redefined in “Study for A Perfect Storm”. In this new media installation, Wolfe introduces a modern enhancement of present tense emergent video. Developing new applications for existing technologies, Wolfe engages custom designed, internal and external mapping/spatial systems that break conventions. Original video staged and shot in his studio provides visual components for an installation that transcends its footage to be a mechanically engineered, virtual reality installation. The next evolutionary step in materializing an auxiliary reality, spectators are further drawn into becoming an integrated part of the videotaped world as they view it on the screens. “Study for A Perfect Storm” gently embodies an artist's ability to create a completely fabricated platform that empowers a viewer with the latitude to accept an alternate reality as their own.