The concept of narrative fiction and real time has been a theme in my work since the early 1970s. The construction of fictional environments which involve a crime or at least the realization that a crime could have happened lead to the inclusion of real time elements; these elements take a variety of forms from the wind moving a curtain in a room, bubbles being formed in a continually running bathtub, the disintegration and rotting of food, the sound of music or the scent of perfume permeating a room. Many of these environments were influenced by the study of how the
camera in film moves through a scene; the utilization of different lenses to give narrative tension to what actually appears in the frame and what is implied in the narrative void. These strategies were built into my structures, the viewers’ eye becoming the camera, but unlike a camera in film, which forms a linear structure, this time a fragmented non-linear structure forms on the retina.’
– Mac Adams
