Recessions

Audio: 

Interior view of tunnel book A View of the Tunnel under the Thames, as it will Appear When Completed  (London: S. E. Gouyn, 1828).
Library Company of Philadelphia

Transcription: 

Nina Katchadourian: All of these things in this group for me are, are a little bit about where the 2D and the 3D meet or perhaps get confounded with one another. There are plays here with, with depth hand space, but also to me, a sort of low-tech version of a virtual reality experience where you gaze into something and are brought into a space that envelops you. So what the tunnel book asks you to do, and I think this isn't too different from what virtual reality games might ask you to do, is to forget that you have a body that is engaged in the activity and to be completely within this illusionistic space that is created for you and that you're asked to step into and that you have to take a sort of leap towards believing. What's also fantastic about the tunnel book, and I chose this one out of many other examples, is because it is a tunnel book about a tunnel between two different sides of the River Thames in London.