“The Key to Time” by Roderick Coover, Krzysztof Wołek

Title:

The Key to Time

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):

Roderick Coover
Krzysztof Wołek

Symposium:

ISEA2020: 26th International Symposium on Electronic Art
More artworks from ISEA2020:

Medium:

Artist Statement:

The Key To Time is a highly experimental and imaginative, immersive, cinematic art experience designed for 360 cinemas, domes, virtual reality headsets and other immersive formats. It offers a surreal and operatic, dream-like experience, and it bridges early cinema and virtual reality. Filmed at the CeTA Studios in Wroclaw, Poland, and created using 3-D 360 degree cinema technologies, the experience plunges viewers into a dreamlike adventure inside mechanisms of time and cinema itself.

The dreamlike story follows Tanek, a scientist who is trapped in the future due to a time-travel accident. His only hope is to travel through dreams. As with works like Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room and David Blair’s Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, this experimental art work turns upon its narrative threads. In addressing time, technology and environmental catastrophe, it also echoes themes of classics of early cinema like Arrival of a Train (at Ciotat) and Metropolis. The Key To Time occupies a space between media arts, sound and cinema. It is the result of an unique collaboration between media artist/filmmaker Roderick Coover and composer Krzysztof Wolek. Song and dialog elements layer over cinematic sequences filmed silently both in green screen studio settings and natural settings.

Sponsors:

This project is one of the +100 works sponsored by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM) as part of POLSKA 100, the international cultural program accompanying the centenary of Poland regaining independence. The work was primarily filmed in the green screen studios at CeTA Audio Visual Technology Center in Wroclaw. The work was produced by Chouette Collective with co-production from Adam Mickiewicz Institute and CeTA. Additional support was provided by TR Theater Warsaw. Temple University and Louisville University.