Video, color, silent, 30:00 (loop); LCD screen; laser disc; laser disc player
3.5 x 4.5 inches / 8.9 x 11.4 cm (screen)

One of three videos that shows a part of the body filled beyond its capacity to absorb a flow of water, (the capacity of absorption • video) evidences an ear subject to this immersion. Within the installation, this video was shown on a monitor set within the bell end of a megaphone, based on Athanasius Kirchner’s seventeenth-century horn designed for projecting sound over great distances. At its other end was a telephone mouthpiece, which, when spoken into during the installation, had the paradoxical effect of silencing the sound of the swirling water in the 150 wall mounted glasses. When the video was editioned in 1993 (along with three other videos), the artist specified a flat-screen monitor, with screen measuring 3 ½ × 4 ½ inches / 8.9 × 11.4 cm.

text

Text excerpted from Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects. New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2006. Joan Simon.