MOMI blog post

The most memorable installation at the museum of moving image is perhaps the rotating sculpture Feral Fount, created by Gregory Barsamian in 1996, which used the visual techniques of optical illusion to create a life like animation of a faucet releasing a drop pf water. The drop would then fall and turn into a bomb, which was then caught by a hand and ultimately transformed into a paper airplane. The entire sculpture was composed of many smaller ones; each sculpture differed slightly from the one preceding it as it turned. The smaller sculptures were the “frames” in the optical illusion’s flip book style appearance, with a strobe light going off to make the whole sculpture look as if it was morphing in real life. The feral fount is a creative use of a more low tech of moving image, with its mechanism only constituting of a motor. The illusion of animation is created by the split seconds of darkness before each strobe light flash. The lights flash thirteen times a second, creating a thirteen frame per second animation. The sculpture evokes anti-war sentiment in context of the time it was made; conflicts in the middle east were scrutinized by art through political messages. It can be argued that Barsamian incorporated this kind of message into his sculpture and used the medium of moving image to his advantage, creating art with purpose. The word feral in the piece’s title relates to the aggressiveness of the message; the manner in which the bomb transforms in particular stood out the most.