MURPHY is a pure synchronised sound and light projection in which the artist consciously withdraws his own figure. Unlike more traditional Melhus pieces, in which the artist embodies different roles, MURPHY operates a dramatic reduction to abstract fields of color and concentrates exclusively on its sound footage, which results from a collage of some of the most significant moments from mainstream War movies. The videolight sequence is based on sound snippets from the movie Blue Thunder (USA, 1982), which was one of the early 1980’s media rehabilitations of Vietnam war veterans in civilian society. In the original movie Captain Frank Murphy is a good cop and former Vietnam war helicopter pilot with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who fights Lt. Colonel Cochrane, an evil cop and also Vietnam veteran. The final showdown between Murphy and Lt. Colonel Cochrane, who pilots a cannon-equipped Hughes 500 helicopter against the high tech helicopter Blue Thunder, takes place over the skies of Los Angeles and includes an initial battle with two Air National Guard F-16 fighters. By re-integrating war veterans into a civilian society, the war itself was subconsciously brought to America and turned the air space above the urban landscape of Los Angeles into a battlefield. In MURPHY the visible stream of colored light and the absence of the image itself creates an imaginary movie. MURPHY is a true abstract Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.