The Hudson River has long inspired artists including The Hudson River School of Artists who painted sublime landscapes of its arresting vistas. These paintings have been described as “tranquility tinged with terror.”

TIDAL VOLUMES OF THE HUSDON RIVER consists of six individual still images and one six-minute video loop. To create this work, I photographed the Hudson River’s currents in both still and moving pictures at several locations along its banks. I then projected the resulting moving images and re-recored them, using a rear projection screen. I then projected the resulting video and rerecorded that. I repeated this several times, each time further degrading the image. At a certain point the images of water are at the edge of being recognizable and are transformed into forms of glowing and pulsating colored light; a sublime spectacle, or tranquility tinged with terror. The video installation SITTING IN A ROOM is a loop of this last recording. The audio is also subjected to the same process, resulting in a reverberation of itself and the resonance of the room. The title pays homage to Alvin Lucier’s seminal work, “I am Sitting in a Room.”

Each photographic print is a composite of six still pictures taken from each of various stages of filming. Organizing the photographs by location, Beacon, Croton on Hudson, etc., I then layered the six iterations to represent each of the river views.

A photograph generally represents a view of a particular place at a particular moment. Each of these images represents multiple moments of their own production, encompass time and contain traces of the past. The degradation and manipulation of the image brings forth a new beauty.

RITA MAAS

RITA MAAS