Periscope

Live Generative Video Installation 2012

show this ⇓

In collaboration with Deborah Aschheim & Daragh Byrne

    Amazon.com campus, 207 Boren Ave. N., Seattle, WA 2012
Commissioned by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. for the Amazon.com building at 207 Boren Avenue North in Seattle, as part of the revitalization campaign for the South Lake Union neighborhood which includes many public artworks. My portion of the Periscope installation is an autonomously generated video, changing daily, which is composed of surveillance and webcam images gathered from around the world.
Images and video coming soon!
hide this ⇑

Security Blanket

Live Generative Video 2010

show this ⇓
Security Blanket

In collaboration with Sarah Fierberg Phillips

Security Blanket is a ‘video quilt’ whose dynamically-generated pattern is formed out of hijacked surveillance camera feeds. The project juxtaposes references to the American quilting tradition, associated with images of early Americana and notions of ‘traditional American values,’ with modern hi-tech tools of paranoid social control.

In the process, it foregrounds an obsessive attention to the unobserved minutiae of everyday human experience while posing questions about contemporary American values.

Does an atmosphere of hyper-vigilance and loss of privacy actually make us more secure?


hide this ⇑

Broadcast 25 Patch

Autonomous Video Remixer 2006

show this ⇓
Broadcast 25 Patch

Inspired by traditional quilt patterns and the impending end of analog broadcast TV, this generative piece is based on a software algorithm that autonomously remixes the video stream.

Broadcast 25 Patch

Watch Video:

High Res (18 mb)
Low Res (8 mb)

hide this ⇑

TV – It Gets the Job Done Right

Autonomous Video Installation 2004

show this ⇓
TV - It Gets the Job Done Right

    SAIC MFA Exhibition, Gallery 2, Chicago, IL 2004
In this installation live broadcast TV programs on 11 televisions are continuously remixed into a rhythmic, stroboscopic composition. It functions automatically, cycling among preprogrammed patterns, yet with a strong element of indeterminacy due to the unpredictable content.

This piece manifests the attraction/ repulsion relationship I have with TV. It provides a hyper-stimulating barrage of fast-paced images and sounds, yet frustrates attempts to actually ‘watch’ it in a conventional sense.

Created as the culmination of my MFA in Art & Technology, this electronic installation is run by a MAX/MSP/Jitter patch that both outputs video samples and talks to a PIC microcontroller. The PIC is programmed in C with my rhythmic pattern algorithms and controls custom video switching electronics.

TV - It Gets the Job Done Right

Watch Video Documentation:

big (13 mb)

small (7 mb)

hide this ⇑

Duet For Alto & Tenor Televisions

Multimedia Performance with Electronic Instrument 2003

show this ⇓
Duet For Alto & Tenor Televisions

Duet for Alto and Tenor Televisions is a performance piece using an electronic video/music instrument of my own design. In the improvised performance, tiny snippets of historical found footage are obsessively re-examined and remixed into a live sonic and visual collage. Shifting loops intensify the grain of the voice and image, the micro-gestures of the filmed subjects, and the rhythms that fall into and out of phase as the material is dynamically recombined.

The analog synth-inspired instrument consists of a custom hardware controller interface containing a usb joystick control board wired to a variety of knobs and button banks, as well as a pair of mini lcd screens and digital-analog video scan converters. The interface is connected to a Max/MSP/Jitter software application I built, which contains video and audio sampling, triggering, and effects modules.

Watch Video Documentation

Britton Bertran did an interview with me about this project for the now-defunct Panel House art criticism website.

hide this ⇑

Funk Improvisation For One Performer and Archival Dancers

Music/Video Performance 2002

show this ⇓
Funk Improvisation For One Performer and Archival Dancers

My first piece that linked musical gesture to video processing.
Programmed in Max/MSP/Jitter, this piece is conceived as a dialogue between myself as musical performer and the dancing figures contained in the video material. The visual qualities of the video playback are controlled by the sounds generated by my bass, and my playing is in turn influenced by the randomly-generated combinations of video clips, video filters, and audio loops.

Excerpt of performance video

hide this ⇑

Ethel

Video Performance 2002

show this ⇓
Ethel

When I started my graduate studies at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 I built the first version of my video sampler. This was something I’d been dreaming about for years, and at the time it was a major accomplishment for me to be able to make it myself. ‘Ethel’ was one of my early experiments using the video sampler. Make sure to follow the bouncing ball and sing along!

Watch video clip

hide this ⇑