Skywall
A 360º digitally enhanced photographic panorama of the Alberta landscape that shifts gradually from high resolution images to abstracted cubes of colour.
- Collection Signature Collection
- Location of Work Central Hall, Arrivals Level 1
- Creation Date 2004
- Installation Date 2004
- Medium Photographic panorama
ArtistDerek Michael Besant
Derek Michael Besant is a Canadian artist well known for his unorthodox use of materials and technology in creating exhibitions, installations and collaborative works. The hybrid forms he realizes often include soundtracks that relate to his themes of memory, language, and the body. The physical / psyche balance is always in question in Besant’s projects, from his illusion in the form of a 50 foot high mural of a pinned veil on a building façade, a transported 115 foot high Waterfall to the heart of Toronto’s Banking District, two mammoth steel chairs balanced on one another or a stretch of prairie sky arching over six lanes of traffic.
Besant’s figures blur into oblivion, fall out of reach, leave their impressions in unmade motel bed sheets or sink below surfaces in poetic choreographed movements accompanied by strange soundscapes, which include voice patterns reconstructed as water, train stations and freeways, bird and insect territorial calls erased by wind, or overheard partial phone conversations.