Books, paintings become video art in two exhibitions

It's a commonplace for novels to be adapted for film or the stage. It's rarer for a book such as "Moby-Dick" to be reimagined as, say, a 12-minute silent video.

That's one item on view at the Henry Art Gallery, where literature, painting, film, ballet and e-mail spam provide inspiration for a new show titled "Adaptation." A few blocks away, at Jack Straw Productions, something similar is going on with Heather Dew Oaksen's "Still Point."

Give yourself plenty of time to view these exhibits, especially at the Henry, where some of the work approaches feature-length. Here's the lineup.

At the Henry

"Triangle of Need" by Catherine Sullivan (16 mm film transferred to digital media, 2007, 56 minutes): Sullivan's beautiful three-screen installation follows several narratives, including one triggered by an e-mail scam familiar to anyone who owns a computer. As the "stories" diverge and intersect in unpredictable ways, Sullivan makes striking use of sound, dance and text. Her performers — including a few who play the last surviving Neanderthals — hold the screen with the power of silent-film stars. The score by Sean Griffin, choreography by Dylan Skybrook and the subtitled "click" language spoken by the actors all heighten the strangeness of Sullivan's imaginative world.

Shot mostly on the opulent Vizcaya estate in Miami, "Triangle of Need" has an atmosphere akin to Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad." Its visual flair recalls the work of Matthew Barney (the "Cremaster" series) and Peter Greenaway ("The Pillow Book").

"Moby Dick" and "The Wild Child" by Guy Ben-Ner (single-channel videos, 12 minutes and 17 minutes, 2000 and 2004, respectively). Lighter fare — and thoroughly beguiling. Ben-Ner stages his work, in which he stars along with his children, in his kitchen. Humor and homemade ingenuity fill these quickie versions of the Melville classic and a story made famous by François Truffaut's film, "The Wild Child" (1970).

"The Rape of the Sabine Women" by Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation (single-channel video, 2007, 83 minutes). Inspired by the Roman legend portrayed in Jacques Louis David's painting, "The Rape of the Sabine Women" (1799), this work has a crisp HD look and an atmospheric surround-sound score by Jonathan Bepler that uses everything from a bouzouki ensemble to a "coughing choir." As in "Triangle of Need," the performances recall the silent-film era (there's no dialogue).

Shot in Germany and Greece, "Sabine Women" starts on a thwarted testosterone note, as restless men in suit-and-tie pace the lifeless surroundings of Berlin's Pergamonmuseum, Tempelhof Airport and S-Bahn (where inaccessible women mill around on railway platforms as train-trapped men speed past). The disconnections depicted here strongly echo the work of Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (notably "L'Avventura"). The film's leisurely pacing takes patience, but the payoff, when erotic tensions explode, is worth it.

"Les Noces" by Arturo Herrera (projected black-and-white drawings, 25 minutes, 2007). Herrera's rapidly projected abstract drawings, accompanying Igor Stravinsky's 1923 dance cantata, are more interesting for their pacing than their content. Still, this is a great way to hear "Les Noces" — loud, in the dark, with patterns flashing past you.

At Jack Straw

"Still Point" by Heather Dew Oaksen (multichannel projected videos and sound installation, on continuous loop, 2008). The Seattle artist takes string theory, T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" and an unrealized "happening" by Fluxus artist Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) as the starting points for this hypnotic work. The actions of six performers — shifting into view, fogging glass with their breath — are projected in two streams of imagery onto layered, translucent scrims. To a backdrop of ambient sound that's half-industrial, half-chantlike, visual passages are echoed, phased, repeated, coincide. Result: a fascinating meditation on possible multiple existences and timeless moments within the stream of time. Oaksen discusses her work at 7 p.m. Jan. 23.

Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times arts writer