We Are Stardust
An installation that reflects on the metaphorical nature of imaging technologies
in the exploration of our environments. Two visualizations redraw with
laser and infrared camera in the gallery the angle of views of sky observations
by the sun orbiting Spitzer telescope since its launch in 2003.
Art Center College of Design (2008)
Blink
Full wall projection consists of a matrix of eyes that open and close
based on their neighbor’s behaviors. Each eye's decision is dependent
on statistically evaluating what its neighbor eyes are doing, dynamically
calculated in realtime.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2007); Artissima, Turin (2007); Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto (2006)
Cell Tango
An interactive installation that features a dynamically growing collection
of cellphone images visually sequenced according to contributors'
metadata and text tags.
Theatre Poitiers Inaugural Event, France (2008); National Academy of Sciences, Washington (2007); Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto (2006); ISEA06, San Jose (2006)
Dynamic Modulations (proposal)
A large multiscreen display in the waiting room area of the OU Tulsa campus
clinic hospital. The screens feature dynamically generated visualizations
based on the movement of fish inside three tanks located in the entrance
way.
Clinic Research Facility, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa
Kinetic Flow
The project consists of creating a visualization for a leaning 18' x 24'
concrete wall above a staircase and escalator unit at the entrance of
the station. The design concept for the image has been to engage the kinetic
experience of the downward move on both escalator and staircase and escalator,
one smooth, the other sequential. The algorithmically generated abstract
visual rendition uses statistical data sampled from LA metro traffic circulation
to seed the image generating equation.
Making Visible the Invisible
An installation of 6 plasma screens behind the main librarians' desk in
the Mixing Chamber area of the library features visualizations that are
based on statistical analyses of the circulation of non-fiction books
catalogued according to the Dewey decimal system going in and out of the
library's collection.
Seattle Public Library (2005); University of Connecticut (2005); Telic Exchange, Los Angeles (2005)
Pockets Full of Memories II
An expanded and redesigned version of the PFOM installation, initially produced
for the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2001. The public contributes data about
an object in their possession to a database that accumulates throughout
the exhibition's duraction.
Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Rotterdam (2003); Ars Electronica, Linz (2003); Aura, C3 Center for Culture & Communication, Budapest (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2004); Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester (2005); Frankfurt Museum of Communication (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (2007)
Algorithmic Visualizations
Algorithmically generated visualizations begun in the mid 1980's with
extended explorations of mathematical processes related to noise and randomness,
emergence: adaptive algorithms, neural-net implementation, pattern matching,
convolution, image coherence, perception, visual concepts, etc.
Philbrook
Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma (2004); Telic
Exchange, Los Angeles (2006); Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2007)
Chance
Encounters
A computer generated installation featured on video displays at the 7th
and Metro Subway station platforms in Los Angeles. The theme of the installation
was the chance encounter potential of the subway environment, passengers'
thoughts while waiting, and a collection of objects they might carry with
them.
Los
Angeles Metrorail Art Commission, Los Angeles
SensingSpeakingSpace
A large projected abstract image and a six channel ambient sound composition
are continuously changing in subtle details, affected by the movement
of the public in the exhibition space. Using motion sensing technology,
the work addresses the poetics of presence, and narrative plot development
through the acts of wiping away and bringing forth.
SFMOMA, San Francisco (2002); ISEA Festival Exhibition, Nagoya (2002)
Pockets
Full of Memories
Database installation in which the audience contributes to an archive
by digitizing an image of an object in their possession. The sum of the
archive of objects is continuously being organized by a Kohonen self-organizing
map algorithm, positioning objects of similar descriptions near each other.
The archive of objects is projected on a large gallery wall and accessed
on the internet.
Centre Georges Pompidou, National Museum of Modern Art, Paris
Eternal Summer
4 plasma screens feature changing nature scenes with text juxtaposing
stock quotations and personal messages collected from the internet. A
commissioned work for the waiting room of the consulting office Ebner,
Stolz and Partners, Stuttgart.
Ebner,
Stolz & Partners office, Stuttgart
Rickmers Lobby Visualization Proposals
Visualizations for the Rickmers Headquarters Lobby in Hamburg. Left panel
shows wall that lights up Rickmers global shipping routes in response
to viewer movement.
Transitional
Spaces
The movement of people passing through the entrance and hallway spaces
of the Siemens headquarters architecture trigger narrative events seen
on large screen projections within the spaces. Commissioned for the opening
of the Siemens World Headquarters building in Munich, architecture by
Richard Meier.
Rotunde,
Siemens Kultur Programm, Siemens AG Headquarters, Munich
A Sense
of Place
Objects in a large blurred image come into focus according to the
audience's location and movement in front of it. The actions are recorded
in a database and calculated to occasionally trigger transitions to an
image of an urban place, accompanied by ambient sounds to create a sense
of presence either in Beijing or Los Angeles.
Centre for Contemporary Art, Geneva (1998); Labyrinth, Annenberg Center, USC, Los Angeles (1999)
Tracing
A sensor controlled interactive installation consisting of projections
onto a two-sided screen positioned in the middle of the exhibition space.
Two different sets of data projected on the two sides of the screen wall
are set in contrast to each other. The first consisting of phrases and
places from the former Communist countries, the other expresing sentiments
of Californian culture. Commissioned by the Kunst und Austellunghalle,
Bonn and MOCA, Los Angeles.
Kunst und Austellungshalle, Bonn (1997); MOCA, Los Angeles (1998)
Slippery Traces
An interactive installation and CD-ROM publication that addresses
20th Century cultural representation in the form of a multi-linear narrative
to be navigated through a database of 250 postcards. The interaction visualization
was designed in part reflecting on Robbe-Grillet's "Last Year at
Marienbad" fused with the techno-aesthetics of "Blade Runner".
In BUTTERFLY EFFECT, Muszarnok, Budapest (1996); National Gallery of Contempory Art, Prague (1997); Palais des beaux-arts, Brussels; National Gallery of Canada (1997); Osnabrück European Media Festival; travelling in DEEP STORAGE: PS1, New York, Haus Der Kunst, Munich; Kunstforum, Berlin, Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf (1998-2000); FUTURE CINEMA, ZKM, Karlsruhe (2002); Banff Center in DATA IMAGINARY, Banff (2005); University of Toronto Gallery (2004)
[The
Clearing]
An interactive artwork that focuses on the language of American print
media's representation of the Bosnian crisis during the 1993-1994 period.
Published by base.arts, San Francisco.
New Langton Arts, San Francisco (1994); Postmasters Gallery, New York (1995); Berlin Video Festival; Fukui Video Biennale, Japan (1996)
An Anecdoted Archive from the Cold War
An installation work and CD-ROM publication that addresses the archive
as multi-linear narrative and the intersection of personal and official
documents in Stalinist Hungary. Over 60 stories and objects in the artist's
possession are classified according to the floorplan of the former Hungarian
Communist propaganda museum.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (1993); ARTIFICES 3, Univ of Paris (1994); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1994); travelling in BURNING THE INTERFACE, Australia (1996-1998); Palais des beaux-arts, Brussels (1997), National Gallery of Canada (1997); CONTACT ZONES (1999) and many others
Equivalents
II
An interactive work that uses a 2D fractal mid-point synthesis algorithm
to create organic abstract images shaped by text input by the user. All
phrases contributed by users remain with the work and function as reference
for the feedback process when words in the user's phrase are compared
to those in the data pool. The project's title positions digital algorithmic
design in relation to Alfred Stieglitz's 1922 project "Equivalents".
International Center for Photography, New York (1994); traveling in "Photography after Photography", Siemens Kultur Programm, Munich, ICA, Philadelphia; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (1995-1997): Open Space Gallery, San Francisco (1996)
Between East
& West
An installation on the theme of information exchange during the Cold War,
with computer generated images produced by surveillance image processing
algorithms. Image generating software were initiated through collaborative
actions with a programmer in Hungary, near the end of the Socialist era.
YYZ Gallery, Toronto; San Francisco Art Institute Gallery
Noise-To-Signal
A series of investigations of image processing algorithms derived
from space satellite and surveillance literature. The intention was to
generate interesting processes by which to transform existing images,
then later generating images purely from code. At that time, Chaos Theory,
and Shannon's Information Theory were guiding factors directing the conceptualization
of the work.
China in
Transition
A series of 48 documentary photographs of found billboards clustered
in groups of 4. They were taken in 4 cities in the summer of 1985 at a
time when China was opening up to the outside world in the aftermath of
the Cultural Revolution. The billboards' subject matter were unusual in
their juxtapositions of official Maoist propaganda, community education
(Promotion of science, traffic rules, family planning, etc.), movie advertisements,
and commercial advertising. many in English reaching out to an international
business community.
Posing Series
"Posing series" is made up of snapshots taken from two
family photo albums dating from the 1960s. Thematic considerations in
the project address cultural issues such as the complex signifying aspect
of the photograph - the layering of meanings imbedded in the conventions
of the pose, specifically gestural coding.
Lace, Los Angeles (1985); Yajima Gallery, Montreal (1986); National Gallery
of Canada (1997)
Corporate Culture
"Corporate Culture", takes as its theme the complex multilayered
encoding and staging of photographic portraiture, a form of communication
that convey messages imbued with belief systems. These still-lives were
influenced by studies in the staging of photographic portraiture in the
1981 EF. Hutton corporate annual report, a stock brokerage firm, and a
photographic document of Mao Tse Tung«s political life represented through
pictures.
Yajima Gallery, Montreal (1986); San Francisco Art Institute Ethan McBean
Gallery (1991)
Still Lifes
A series of staged still-lives using found or made objects that address
social, cultural and personal narratives. Still Lifes belongs to a group
that include, among others, Everyday Stories, Image/Text Series, Theoretical
Studies, and Object Narratives. These explore, within the framework of
the photographic studio, the system of objects and its syntax in terms
of their semantic relations.
PS1, New York (1981); Yajima Galerie, Montreal (1981); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1982); Delahunty Gallery, NY (1983); La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (1984); CEPA/Hallwalls, Buffalo (1984); Musée d'art contemporain, Montreal (1986); and others
Everyday Stories
The premise of the project was analytic in approach: to investigate
through the ordering of objects in a photographic composition, the narrative
potential and syntax by which images convey meaning. The material used
for these compositions consisted of things lying around inside and outside
the studio, a collection of odds and ends, plastic objects found at goodwill,
detritus, etc
Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario
Syntax of the Copy
Sequences and variations of multiple layerings between an object,
its fascimile, and the copy of the copy. An investigation into the encoding
of meaning, the gain or loss of cultural information in the degrees of
reproduction and their interactions.
Optica Gallery, Montreal
Floating Objects
A series of photographs taken in construction sites across the American
continent over a period of 4 years. The images are a result of formally
composed events that were disrupted through the action of introducing
a chance element. Construction sites were selected as staging grounds
for these images because of their transitional status between nature and
culture.
Yajima Gallery, Montreal; London Regional Art Gallery; Banff Centre Gallery,
Alberta,
Urban Nature
A series of photographic studies that explored the relation between
order and chaos in visual compositions, a precursor to my later interest
in Claude Shannon´s Information Theory. The approach consisted of
studying the visual relationship of cluttered, banal and uneventful subject
matter (a form of noise) in real space and to orchestrate the subject
matter to achieve a formal balance.
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa and others
Catalogue of
Found Objects
A work that addresses the semiotics of objects and systems of classification.
A vacant San Francisco lot was sampled like an archaeological excavation
site resulting in a collection of cast-off objects found on the site.
The artifacts were then classified and catalogued against the same backdrop
using juxtapositions and repetition to reveal similarities and differences.
La Mamelle Art Center, San Francisco; Canadian Museum of Contemporary
Photography, Ottawa
James Bay Cree
Documentary
A photographic document of everyday life in 4 James Bay Cree Indian
settlements in sub-arctic Canada at the time of their legal battle against
the James Bay Hydro-Electric Corporation, resulting in an archive of 2800
images that represented a personalized but systematic overview of the
Cree indigenous culture: rituals, housing, hunting, people, interaction
with nature, the transition to Western ways, etc.
Baldwin St Gallery of Photography, Toronto; Rupert's House, James Bay; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Akwesasne Notes publication