soho in slomo

Some days, don't you wish you could just shift the world's gears, ratchet down the speed of everything going on around you, so that you could take a long, leisurely, languorous LOOK. That's what artist James Nares lets us do, for however long you choose to sit in a darkened room at the Met, watching "Street", his breathtaking "motion art." (Video is an inadequate word.) Nares recorded 16 hours of footage of people on the streets of Manhattan, while wielding an HD camera usually used to record speeding objects like bullets or hummingbirds. Then, he slowed down source material and created an hour of New York street life as you've never seen it--slowwwwwwww. Like still photography, this art isolates objects, giving us opportunity--and encouragement--for a closer look at what we'd ordinarily miss--the mole on a face, the hand in a pocket, a plastic shopping bag breaking free from doorway. Watch a preview here, or, better yet, catch it at the Met which will screen it continuously through May 27.