Joe McKay

Sunset Solitaire, 2007

In this performance/video/game I wrote a program and built custom hardware that let me mix the sunset live. I then projected with a video projector, from my computer onto a garage in a field behind my studio. As the sun set behind the building I attempted to match the color of the sunset with the projector. I did this for several days (you only get one attempt per evening of course). Each time I would go back to the studio and fined tuned the software, and each time my skills got a little better.

On my last attempt I videotaped the session, mixing for both a live audience and the camera. The result is a 35 minute video that takes us from a point when there is too much ambient light for the illusion to really work, to almost complete darkness.

Thanks to Jaime Cortez for the camera work. The full runtime of this video is 35 minutes.