Squint

2013

Installation

A system-based installation in which perception and recognition emerge from constrained processes of mediation.

Press:

Archived press (The Creators Project, 2013)

Squint is a system-based installation that explores perception, memory, and translation through the inversion of form and image. It is an early work in which Tyson Parks invents a custom process to investigate how motion, time, and viewpoint condition what can be seen and recognized.

The project draws implicit reference from early optical and proto-cinematic devices, not as historical reenactment, but as a way of framing how shifts in visual mediation reshape perception and self-awareness. Rather than foregrounding spectacle, Squint treats mediation itself as the primary material.

The installation consists of a slowly rotating sculptural object modeled after a familiar everyday form but distorted into abstraction, mounted on a stand and filmed by a camera in real time. The live feed is processed and displayed on a projected surface positioned above the camera, functioning as a transformative mirror.

Within this mediated reflection, abstraction and legibility are inverted: the physical object is reconstituted into a recognizable form, while the surrounding space and viewers are fragmented and obscured.

Central to the work is an investigation of how translation exposes the limits of perception. Squint does not resolve illusion into clarity, but instead reveals how recognition depends on the systems through which forms are encountered. Perception is treated as an active negotiation between structure, memory, and point of view rather than a passive reception of visual facts.

By foregrounding mediation as structure rather than effect, Squint anticipates a longer inquiry into how formal systems condition what can be seen, recognized, and resolved.