On February 9, 2005, I wrote the below paper on a local exhibit for a first year art history course, during my fifth year of university. The professor made a comment about the words in my write-up sitting as an interstices of the art. Too bad I didn’t start taking art history in first year, then maybe I wouldn’t be sitting around with a useless computer science degree.

David Hoffos’ Scenes From the House Dream was setup in MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, whose interior is typical of a contemporary art gallery: several closed off white walled rooms with light hardwood floors. The very nature of Hoffos’ video installation made its display distinct from other works housed in the gallery due to its requirement of complete darkness. This was accomplished by transforming one of these spaces into a make-shift dark room with a black curtain draped entrance, a reference to the theatre world, implying to those passing through to suspend their disbelief.

The room’s right wall held three small framed windows, showcasing miniature painted models with low-end televisions in front of each projecting images upon glass planes in each display. The position of these televisions restricted my movement and viewing angles to each miniature. The televisions emitted a mono soundtrack to coincide with the display each was projecting upon. The congregation of sounds from each channel in the room’s exhibit created a looping dissonance that was never quite resolved. This made me feel uneasy as concentrating on each miniature became difficult with the overwhelming low-end hum produced by the amalgamation of sound sources.

The first window, titled Airstream, focused on a mid-twentieth century mobile home located in the heart of a murky forest. Mirrors in the miniature setup gave the effect of a multitude of lit trailers in the background as if the size of the forest and trailer community continued into the infinite darkness. The mobile home in the foreground contained a bright interior with the light emanating through its small windows and open doorway highlighting the nearby firewood pile and casting long, sharp shadows on the forest landscape. Unnaturally in the background, a bright florescent luminosity shines from above the trees down upon the forest floor, creating a tension between the unknown light source beyond the treetops and the artificial brightness of the mobile home’s interior.

On first glance, the scene appears to be a campsite located deep in an old-growth woodlot. However, the lack of vehicles such as trucks to tow each trailer left me to believe this neighbourhood included citizens who were once nomads but now have found a permanent home, closed off from the outside world.

Acoustic space of the forest was filled with a harrowing wind blowing amidst the trees. Wildlife including owls, birds, frogs, and crickets intermittingly interrupted the night-time with their calls. There was a caution in the air as a middle-aged man appeared to be given birth out of the illuminated mobile home’s doorway. He walked a few paces away from his trailer and looked about the surrounding darkness, as if he was expecting an outside force to emerge and disrupt his homely life. Perhaps he is on the watch for wildlife dangers, malevolent aliens appearing from the light above, Lovecraftian monsters leaping out from the darkness, or intrusive, violent neighbours. When he concedes that he will not uncover any objects causing his anxiousness, the man calmly returns and disappears back into the light of his home.

I felt the firewood and mobile home represented the camping adventure, but it is now in a permanent setting. These ideas remind me of the comfort that surrounds campfires, much like the comfort a home gives. But the dark towering trees seem to foreshadow gloom on the man in his mobile home. Uneasiness captured by the lighting disparity in the scenery twists the childhood memories of camping, altering them into a permanent ghost story in which the conclusion never arrives.

The next window in the installation, 65 Footer, was another night-time scene, containing a boathouse tied to a dock that extended beyond my field of vision (also due to the mirroring technique used in the previous window). There was a submerged light within the water, setting a stark contrast with the dock’s dark wood colour. On the boat, an adult paced back and forth as if they were perplexed by unsolvable problems. It’s possible they fear resolving these problems due to the commitment and consequences involved.

During his in-class lecture, David Hoffos displayed a slide in which he pointed out a monstrous squid beneath the water’s surface; however I could not see this squid at the installation, possibly due to my restricted angles while observing the exhibit. But I will assume there was no squid and the problems of the main character were internal.

The sound of soft waves brushing up against the dock and boathouse could be heard, as the light below combined with the waves to make the boat’s port shimmer, contrasting the darkness of its deck upon which the highlighted character paced.

Airport Hotel, the miniature in the next window gave a voyeuristic view of a woman walking about her room overlooking an empty runway. My vantage point was from the doorway of this hotel room, with visual access to half the room concealed from my point of view. The sound of tranquil elevator music faintly heard in the background, along with the room’s smooth lighting, set a peaceful atmosphere.

This atmosphere is conflicted as the scene turns disturbing when the hotel guest appears from her hidden niche. In the foreground she stood wearing pants and a shirt; however I couldn’t see the woman’s reflection in the window panes behind her and she didn’t cast a shadow. She looked out her room’s wall-spanning window at an empty night-time runway, with the only distinctive feature in its scenery being a lone blinking light signalling to overhead airplanes. When the woman didn’t come across anything out of the ordinary in the obscurity of the dark airstrip, she returned back out of sight.

Next, the sound of glasses clinging can be heard as this woman rummaged through her room’s mini-fridge. When I saw her appear again, she was now wearing a bathrobe with a cigarette and a presumably alcoholic drink in hand, signifying she has committed to stay the night. She had found familiar comforts, united with the soothing visual and auditory mood of her guest room. But her pacing about the room seemed to indicate an agitation and the woman’s gaze toward the airport runway suggested she was waiting for an arriving plane carrying a loved one. The outdoor shadows represented the unknown factors that may keep this lover from reaching their destination. As the woman paced, in her mind she played out possible scenarios that delayed the lover’s plane.

While the first three displays were miniatures, the last presentation took me for a surprise since I didn’t immediately recognize it as artificial. While watching the airport hotel room, I had this constant feeling of being watched. I finally noticed a slightly green-tinted life-sized woman sitting through a doorway in an otherwise unlit room to the left of me. Was she real? I continued studying the airport hotel while watching the woman out of the corner of my eye.

A droning ambient track similar to a climactic suspense scene in a David Lynch film set the tone of a woman sitting alone at a table with an empty chair beside her. I became aware the woman was an illusion when her image flickered and the drone simultaneously stuttered. A hidden monitor projected an image upon life-sized 2D wooden cut-outs arranged to present a 3D illusion on a continuous loop.

This woman sat unaccompanied, drinking alcohol and lighting a cigarette. Her body language conveyed apprehension. Combined with the sinister ambience, I got the feeling she was about to do something horrible – murder? She endlessly sat, not speaking, wrapped up in a realm outside physical reality – the intellectual world.

Using modern cinema’s genre film noir as a frame of reference, David Hoffos has painted contrasted surreal worlds of absently present introverted characters contemplating the answers to reality’s mysteries. The home motif represents comfort and the familiar habits of the daily life. Ghostly figures floating about the homes tear apart the comfort of home as the unsettled minds of each character sets a mood of paranoia and fear of the unfamiliar. This idea is further visualized by the tension generated between lightness and darkness by the sharply contrasted film noir style.

The combination of low resolution image projections and low-fidelity audio attributed to the nostalgic quality of this installation. Translucent, blurred qualities of the characters represented both their own hazy perceptions in dreams and my obscured view of their troubles. The multimedia presentations conveyed the uncertain meanings of dreams while still focusing on the subconscious portions of the psyche that are brought to the forefront through these dreams.