In the video installation ‘Empty’, 2006, Willie Doherty has used a series of fixed-frame shots to record the exterior of a disused office building from dawn to dusk throughout the course of a single day. The shots have been edited together to form an eight minute film. The film begins with a shot of the building against the backdrop of a dark sky, there is a single orange streetlight in the foreground, and the distant sound of a helicopter is suggestive of surveillance. The building is utilitarian and unremarkable, it is clad in painted metal siding, which is weathered and peeling due to disuse. The palette of this film is predominantly blue; this is largely due to the building’s own colour, and also the blue sky, either above or behind the edge of the building, or reflected in windows and puddles. Movement is introduced through the rippling reflections of clouds travelling across the sky, trees rustling in the wind and birds flying across the frame of the camera. The soundtrack is ambient: rainfall, birds singing, leaves rustling, traffic, and the occasional car horn, and the distant noise from a helicopter at the beginning and the end.