Present Continuous Past(s) (1974) is a room with mirrored walls, a video camera and a screen below the camera. The mirrors reflect present time, and the video camera tapes what is immediately in front of it and the entire reflection on the opposite mirrored wall.

The screen plays the recordings 8 seconds later, and a person viewing the monitor sees both the image of himself or herself of 8 seconds earlier, and what was reflected on the mirror from the monitor eight seconds prior to that, 16 seconds in the past.

The mirror at right angles to the other mirror-wall and to the monitor-wall gives a present-time view of the installation as if observed from an “objective” vantage exterior to the viewer’s subjective experience and to the mechanism that produces the piece’s perceptual effect. It simply reflects (statically) present time.

It has 3 major characteristics, 1) Interactive – the audience completes the artwork by entering the room and appearing on the screen; 2) Captures multiple perspectives, unlike paintings which are still images; 3) Time-space distortion created by the time lag: time as a dimension that can be experienced in space

The concept of the piece is to bring self-awareness to the viewer of how people perceive them by lagging the time of the present by 8 seconds and allowing them to view the video of themselves.