| I never thought of my work as animation. I
build the computers/projectors, so, in terms of process, I always have thought of the
animation as integral to the piece. It is more an issue of what the technology can produce
versus what people can see. When I
first started building projectors, it struck me that most audiences were completely blind
to what most artists made. I desperately wanted to make something that people could see.
People breeze in and out of galleries in seconds, even in a very good painting show.
However, there is some-thing about a moving image that hooks people, and when the imagery
alludes to the technology, it is even more compelling. The computer has made animation
better. Since the computer operates within a perpetual program loop, moving imagery is
only natural. As a matter of fact, if the imagery isn’t moving it means something is
wrong. On the computer, the "animation" is just a metaphor for the data. How we
understand the technology and its uses depends on the interfaces we build for them.
I am showing a cross-section of projectors
and gaming devices I’ve built since 1995. There will also be several browsers to view
web content by other artists. My first projectors have a kind of documentary/abject look
to them. The videos were of large commercial spaces shot so they appeared rough –
sometimes like war footage. Next, I started building smaller projectors out of flashlights
because I wanted people to have an intimate experience of the work. The videos made more
and more use of computer animation until I wound up building computers instead of
projectors... although I still build projectors. There are really two levels of meaning in
the work. The first is about the devices, to perform a task they never were intended to
do: bricolage. The second level dovetails with the first but addresses con-tent specific
to each piece. The animation will accentuate the physical nature of the piece but will
open up to a theme. I try to prompt very basic questions without explicitly asking them.
In a way, the piece is an operational manifestation of concept... some algorithm of
consciousness moments away from being ponderous, when the disparate components which
comprise the work would disappear within a new entity… |
