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Let us imagine a straight line of unlimited length, and on this line a material point A, which moves. If this point were conscious of itself, it would, since it moves, feel itself change: it would perceive a succession. But would this succession assume for it the form of a line?

—Henri Bergson

Let us imagine a straight line (2009)

Six installations for sound, custom instruments, & moving image

Interactive system design, video, sound, and hardware by Butch Rovan
Movement by Ami Shulman

Click on the image below to play an overview video.

Let us imagine a straight line - Overview from Butch Rovan on Vimeo.

Commissioned by the Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University. Additional support from the Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award and The Lighting Science Group.

Overview

Let us imagine a straight line is an interactive work about movement, the first installment in my ongoing project for dancer, video, music, and live electronics called Studies in Movement. I take these titles from two French thinkers of the late 19th century: physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey and philosopher Henri Bergson. Marey conceived the apparatus for the modern scientific study of movement. He invented instruments to measure human and animal locomotion—a beating heart, a bird in flight—and developed technologies that eventually led to the modern cinema. Bergson responded to these advances with a philosophy that rethought the relation between space and time, matter and memory, physical and psychical movement.

The counterpoint of Bergson’s thought and Marey’s vision suggests a drama about the power and limits of human perception. Let us imagine a straight line invites participants to experience the difference between their two ways of seeing.

The full work features six different installations, which can be displayed in different combinations. They include:

On the details page I describe all six pieces, shown at the inaugural exhibition for the Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University, in 2009.

Exhibitions / Screenings / Publications

Let us imagine a straight line has been seen by thousands of viewers during showings in the U.S., Poland, Australia, and elsewhere.

2023 Upcoming installation at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, CT (August - October).
2020 Featured in the Spatial Studies Symposium in Turkey, June 19-20 (in the “Space Representation” session).
2016 “Let Us Imagine a Straight Line: Discovering the Content of Gesture Through Interactive Performance.” Butch Rovan & Ami Shulman, Seventh Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies: Gesture – Creativity – Multimodality. Paris
2015 Photographic images from Let us imagine a straight line featured in Analogy and Design (University of Virginia Press) by Andrea Ponsi. Translated by Antony Shugaar (Charlottesville: 2015).
2014 Photographic images from Let us imagine a straight line selected for publication with the article "Visualisation of Motion," in the publication Useful Symbiosis Reloaded, University of Palacky, Olomouc, Czech Republic.
2013 Photographic images from Let us imagine a straight line featured in the article "Ecodaptive Skins: Morphology of Movement," in Unconventional Computing - Design Methods for Adaptive Architecture (editors: Rachel Armstrong and Simone Ferracina) published for the ACADIA 2013 Adaptive Architecture Conference, October 2013 at the University of Waterloo, School of Architecture in Cambridge, Ontario.
2012 Photographic image from Let us imagine a straight line featured in Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image and its Digital Future (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies), by John Lechte (New York: Routledge, 2012), 175.
2012 Photographic image from Let us imagine a straight line featured in Intuition in Medicine: A Philosophical Defense of Clinical Reasoning, by Hillel D. Braude (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 103.
2011 WRO 14th Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland, May – June.
2011 ISEA2011 International Symposium on Electronic Art, Istanbul (online gallery).
2010 International Computer Music Conference, Stony Brook, NY, June.
2010 Expanded Architecture International Film Night, Sydney, Australia, November
Sydney Architecture Festival [documentation video only].
2009 “Let us imagine a straight line: an interactive installation,” presentation and panel discussion hosted by the Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University, December.
2009 Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University, October – November.

For additional video documentation see details page.