Body Images is an exploration of the television screen as a graphic surface, and movement, line, shape and time are the elements used as design tools. Laurie composed the electronic music sound track to complement the rhythmical, pendular movement of the camera.
“McDonald’s most dramatic work was ‘Body,’ where the lighting was arranged so that body contours and edges received the most intense illumination. The camera was then swung pendulum-like from above and the tape ran between two decks to effect a brief time delay. The resultant imagery, reversed so that the body’s lit contours became black lines, was like a Matisse drawing come alive. Time-delayed pictures recurred and faded behind the primary images, increasing the rhythm and grace of an already powerful graphic drama. Images were at once extremely abstract – like Matisse’s simplest sinuous line – and photographically real; and hovering continuously between these two perceptual levels, they created a visual poem of startling lyricism.”
–Carol Zemel, Artscanada’s “Issue of Video Art” (October 1973)
