L I V I N G S T I L L
LS Pourangahau
The unchanging nature of a still image means it
can never be a true reflection of the living world as life
is never perfectly still. There is a hint of oxymoron in the
English expression Still Life, which is perhaps better
described by the french Nature Morte. LS Pourangahau is
a Living Still, a work which inhabits the space is between
still and movement: at first it appears fixed, but has life
breathed into it by continuous slow evolution. It breaks the
dichotomy between still and motion, retaining the serenity
of the motionless while introducing the change and variation
of the living. The work is based on a single image of a
forest – sometime discernible, sometimes not –
and passes through a myriad of colours and moods reflecting
the calm, but often magical activity, found in a real
forest. In its original form it is an infinitely varying
projection – breaking with the finite and giving the
observer a genuinely unique, but ephemeral, experience; in
this online version two opposing points in the infinite cycle
of day and night are captured by two video segments of
forest life.