Version City
A suite of large-scale interactive video works which allow viewers to call in from their cellphones to further the narrative.
Beginning with an interest in street photography, years ago, I've been involved with image-making in one way or another all along. Most recently, I've made a collection of experimental video work for the web. These tiny videos, like 30 frame-per-second collaged miniatures, became addictive to produce because of their immediacy (like a long series of daily readymades) and, more importantly, their ability to find an instant venue online. One interesting thing that happened in their evolution was their increasing social aspect. The more I floated work out into the world, the more the work had to do with the small world it was floating out into. More and more the videos seemed to be a dialog with their viewers. The standard one-way model gave way to a more conversational form.
On the other end of the spectrum from these small 320 x 240 pixel offerings was the opportunity to make something for the screens at IAC last semester. The jump to 120 feet x 12 feet was huge. Making video for public, architectural space as opposed to the surprisingly intimate, public/private space of a virtual gallery was exciting and somewhat terrifying. in the end, advent, the piece that i made, was entirely different in its "debut" then i had imagined. Originally created as a sort of meditative piece that the public wanders/wonders through contemplatively, it behaved more like a giant pinball machine. With the night's 37 simultaneous users it was a huge hyperkinetic spectacle. (Exciting!...Wrong?!...Different!)
I'd like to push on what i learned from that experience, combining the social/conversational aspect of a kind of personal filmmaking with the large scale of interactive public artworks.
