San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco War Memorial and Veteran's Building, 401 Van Ness Avenue, now San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

Darryl Sapien with Michael Hinton, Within the Nucleus (1976)

Description

Two performers wearing video camera headmounts assembled a thirty-two foot tall double helix ladder suspended on a floor to ceiling armature of tightened ropes. Inside a cylindrical plastic curtain each performer ascended his red or green ladder as he built it, one rung at a time. Both performers could only see through the video cameras attached to their heads. The visual images of each camera were projected live on two large screens behind the shrouded tower. One screen was tinted red and the other tinted green to correspond to the red and green ladders being built. Upon reaching the top the performers exited the cylinder through the ceiling. Ultra violet light was then projected onto the ladders to illuminate the fluorescent paint on the rungs. Finally the performers descended the ladders with their white costumes glowing in the dark. (Sapien 2013)