Displacement Zoetrope
Portable Interactive Installation 2004
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PORTOTONIC, Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC 2004
In 2004 I became part of the art collective Tactonic, joining Huong Ngo and Matthew Steinke. The group’s work combined recycled materials, the love of low-technology, and an interest in social interactions. Our collaboration culminated in the PORTOTONIC exhibition, a collection of portable artworks highlighting themes of travel, displacement, and nomadism.
My own piece took the work I had been doing with looped video micro-narratives, and adapted that idea to a distinctly low-tech approach. I built a Zoetrope, an early animation device, which was housed in a vintage child’s suitcase, and created a series of looping animated sequences to be played back using it. Each animation strip focused on displaced people in the midst of difficult transition – deported Jews in the Holocaust, arrested Mexican border crossers, Haitian boat people. The ‘peepshow curiosity’ aspect of the Zoetrope contrasted with the seriousness of the subject matter, calling attention to the relationship between the detached voyeurism of the viewers and the plight of the subjects depicted.
Unnatural Geographic
Interactive Animation Installation 1999
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In collaboration with Miguel Barbosa, Johnny Chang, Luis Duron, Erina Fukumoto, Roderick Portales, and Tameka Wallace
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ZEUM, San Francisco, CA 1999-2000
After working to help open Zeum, San Francisco’s Art and Technology center for youth, I was offered the opportunity to be their Artist-In-Residence for a season.
For my residency, I taught a 3D modeling and animation workshop to a group of talented teens. The students and I invented, modeled, and animated a menagerie of otherworldly characters. I then created an ambitious interactive six-screen surround presentation, complete with futuristic control console and multi-channel soundtrack, in Zeum’s Media Cone.
