In Kevin Hamilton's Monitor, he explores perceptions of modern imagery. This reflection on the self and concepts of documentation on perception started during the nineteenth-century colonial era. Artists were sent on expeditions to render drawings and sketches of the landscapes of "distant lands" and peoples. However, with the invention of the camera also in the late nineteenth century, new discourse arose questioning the depiction of earlier painting and sculpture. Towards the end of twentieth century, with this broader adoption of technology, a concern arose about manipulated forms in both photography and video. The creation of fictional images which deceived both the eyes and the perception was considered inevitable but daunting in regard to its social implications. Since the 1960s, new media and its "authenticity" has become the core of exploration for most of contemporary artists.

Kevin Hamilton, the participant of this year's Digital Vision, is interested in "site-based projects,"* which he often creates through video, web, or digital photography. Media art, a generic term in Contemporary Art, refers to works that are related to mass media including video art, electronic art and Internet art. Hamilton's Monitor is a piece of video art displayed both online, as net art, and offline, as a gallery projection.

Monitor, according to Hamilton, is a "perspectival box,"* that presents his perceptual reactions, recurrent interests, and repetition. Such reactions and engagement, under Hamilton's investigation, reflect on the pursuit for "affirmation of existence and presence." In other words, human curiosity to see or know both in places unheard or unseen such "liveness verifies existence of the world [that is out of reach]"* . According to Hamilton, it is this desire that urges people to engage in a kind of "continuous update" state. For Hamilton, using a webcam or watching CNN/live television broadcast are familiar scenes and acts form which he can draw new vocabulary.

As his project, Monitor, sequences appear in seamless loops with dark bands sliding upwards. One sequence illustrates a man sitting against a wall, throwing a ball across the opposite wall, waiting for the ball to bounce back. The act of bouncing continues as the timestamp proceeds to move forward on the top of the monitor. The surveillance-like video is actually a manipulated scene from Steve McQueen's famous war-epic movie, The Great Escape. Hamilton uses the clock "to guise the information shown on the surveillance monitor." Thus the online viewer is part of the scene, generating the monitor and the timestamp in real time according to computer's setting. However, under patient and careful observation, the viewer will notice the clock slowly falling behind because the timestamp only records according to McQueen's imagery of bounced balls, one second per gesture.

Hamilton works appeal to a broad band of audience who are "fluent with web or TV based imagery of liveness."* For a true understanding of his work, the user should be familiar with the imagery or film history. Since only a small population is are familiar with Western cinematic icons, the loop of a 1963 war hero may become abstracted. Hamilton plays with his audience's knowledge and this information on the one hand, privileging those who understand the significance of the imagery culturally chained to the project. On the other hand he leaves the rest to visually interact with this alien image on a visual and non-metaphoric level.

When watching the film loop of this enclosed space (whether a cell or a studio), there is an inevitable feeling of one spying on private space. One can regard this piece as a clinical study of spatial practice, such as Foucault's interest in prison or hospital planning and Bentham's invention of Panopticon. Although Hamilton admits that his interest focuses more upon de Certeau than Foucault, he is interested in the "surveillance gaze" and how it sometimes is "able to retain power through creative use of time"* on the viewer.

Footnotes:
* Quotes taken from the interview with Kevin Hamilton