Spotlight On the Candidates

Performance 2009

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Spotlight On the Candidates

Spotlight Poster

Band temporarily recast as The Hanging Chads. We’re backing up Mayor Menino and other aspiring political wannabees.
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Experimental TV

Residency 2007

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In collaboration with Steve Hoey

In March 2007 I completed an Artist Residency at the historic Experimental Television Center. ETC has an incredible collection of vintage, one-of-a-kind, hand-built video equipment that has been lovingly maintained. Steve and I spent an inspiring week experimenting with the creations of video art pioneers such as Nam June Paik and Dan Sandin, whose ‘Wobulator’ and ‘Image Processor’ video synthesizers continue to yield dynamic, abstract imagery more than 30 years later. We generated about 10 hours of video material, which we are continuing to refine into several pieces.
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Broadcast 25 Patch

Autonomous Video Remixer 2006

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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

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TV – It Gets the Job Done Right

Autonomous Video Installation 2004

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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

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Duet For Alto & Tenor Televisions

Multimedia Performance with Electronic Instrument 2003

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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.

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

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Violence Triptych

Experimental Documentary Video 2003

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Violence Triptych

Part One – ‘That Which Is Not There’

Examines the euphemistic language used by the TV media to describe or camouflage violent acts.

Part Two – ‘3 Memories of War’

Explores the history of how representations of war violence contributed to anti-war movements in Vietnam and World War II.

Part Three – ‘Questioning Entertainment’

Highlights the paradox of violent imagery that is ‘entertaining.’

This three-part video piece was my attempt to channel some of the horror and frustration I felt during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. I was struck by the ways the media at the time glossed over any explicit depictions of the violence that was ensuing. This led me to question whether, given the proliferation of violent imagery that functions as entertainment in our culture, it would be possible to generate anti-war sentiment by explicitly depicting the effects of the war’s violence.
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The Friends Variations: No

Video Cut-Up 2001

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The Friends Variations: No

This piece was a study in constraints. Using only twenty seconds of bad TV, could I transform the seemingly uninspiring source material into something rhythmically compelling and humorous? The results are a testament to the transformative power of repetition.

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