Although Will Duke's primary field - digital animation - is still in the early stages of development as an artistic form, he has already found a well-articulated and distinctive 'voice'. His immediate and hypnotic pieces suspend viewers somewhere between spellbound movie-watching and tense video-game playing. Duke's virtual spaces are deserted, yet loaded with ominous foreboding, an effect created by careful control of time, duration and pace. Movement through these spaces is sometimes a seamless and hallucinatory horizontal drift, at other times a violent and vertiginous swoop. Dramatic use of sound and light also contribute to the exceptionally powerful impact of this work when installed. Projected on a large scale in the relatively small, dark space at Market Gallery in Glasgow, We Fashioned the City on Stolen Memories (2005) was a scary proposition. Far from being a nerdy indulgence in new technology, this, like other examples of Duke's work, uses that technology to comment on a world it renders increasingly abstract, unreal and inhuman.
© John Calcutt 2006