Some images stick with you . . . no matter how close they are to other things you've seen before  . . . and they seem to jump out as capturing something essential about the current culture.

I've found myself going back to this image over and over in the past week.

Now, it takes some 'splainin' to put this image into context.

It's from a live video installation that was up recently at the sculpture center in Queens. As visitors approached a chaotic installation of . . . well . . . for lack of a better word . . . everyday domestic "stuff" they would see on the screen both the installation and themselves, with their own silhouettes and other parts of the image replaced with a substituted texture.

Golden herself describes the project like this: "Live video installation constructed out of altered found objects, lazer prints from ebay and blogs, mirrors, wood, and foamcore. This piece includes a video camera that broadcasts live images to a monitor at its base. A viewer observing the sculpture is captured by the video camera, and then is able to see an altered version of themselves (via a video mixer) on the monitor."

For a better sense of the scenario in motion, there's a YouTube film here.

Now, it's cool in motion, but I find it amazing as a still image. Yeah, I know the digital image-swap is already a million years old, especially with a TV flavor.

But still, there's something about the choice of physical objects and the choice of substituted digital imagery which I find sublime in the stills on Golden's site. There's an aethereal glow, an everyday-magic quality which I find remarkable.

If I'm an art director right now, planning a shoot, this is the effect that I'm going for.

Thanks for the vision, Samara! We'll look forward to more cool work!