Canoe

Canoe
Commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program, this two-minute animation was created by digitally redrawing 1800 frames. Situated at the end of False Creek, this work is a site-specific public artwork near the Georgia Street Viaduct. Georgia Street was named in 1886 after its namesake, the Georgia Strait. This work marks the entrance to, and historic transportation on, the Salish Sea, via False Creek. The name Salish Sea is now officially recognized in both the United States (2009) and Canada (2010). Its major bodies of water are the Strait of Georgia, Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound. This work aims to connect the contemporary flow of urban traffic to the larger rural water based traffic of both historic and contemporary times.  July 11 – Oct 2, 2011.


Off-Site

Off-Site
Premiere: Large projection, (7000 lumen projection with long lens for large image) outdoor corner of James and St. Paul Street, St. Catharines ON, sunset to sunrise, March 28 – April 3, 2011.
The HD video is one continuous shot of a prairie landscape. The image has been sutured and tampered with, so that the wind in the clouds and the wind in the grass blow in opposite directions. The overhead cumulus clouds blow backwards 300% faster than the field of wild grass that blows in the opposite direction, in real time. The work is intended as a subtle joke, testing the viewer’s ability to detect this flaw in the moving image. It also provides a warm inviting vista to look out upon, especially when presented during the dreary winter, months or the beginning of spring. Since most of the population of Canada lives in large urban centres how do we consider landscape in a contemporary world? In a media saturated urban environment, what does it mean to watch a video of a landscape ‘perform’? Off-site creates a subtle unhinging of the ‘naturalness’ of nature.

Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance, Site-specific Video Installation


Reasonable & Senseless: a Technical Disaster
Reasonable & Senseless: a Technical Disaster
Reasonable & Senseless: a Technical Disaster

Reasonable & Senseless
Archival film transferred to video, 20 – 4” LCD monitors, birch plywood and veneer, electronics, cables.
Dimensions: Variable height x 6’ wide x 8” deep.
In this 20-channel video installation, each channel shows a historic film clip of human caused disaster, often created in the name of progress. Over each channel an animated letter appears in smoke, and then dissipates. The screens spell the title of the work, “reasonable & senseless”. This installation uses archival historical footage of disasters in order to investigate the relationship between media, surveillance and human tragedy. The work was installed in a show I curated with Liane Davison, of the same name, in conjunction with works by Michael Alstad, and K.D. Thornton.


And All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

And All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
Video In Studios, SWARM Vancouver, September 9, 2004. with Ricarda MacDonald.
DVD player, data projector, frosted mylar + computer running Max/MSP+Jitter, firewire camera, two monitors, plinths. Variable dimensions, 2004.
A DVD loop is projected onto the exterior window. The image of a slow blink is used to focus on the human failure inherent within surveillance. Its slow, seductive pace counterpoints the frenetic setting of urban car traffic. Underneath the projected image, the title of the work in vinyl is adhered to the window surface. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer is confronted by a pair of video eyes on monitors in the building interior. Using Jitter software, the virtual eyes track and follow the moving viewer. This is the first responsive environment I have made using this type of technology. The title is from a 1967 poem of the same name by Richard Brautigan that imagines a utopian relationship between computers, humans and nature.


Drive

Drive
mixed media, 48” x 18” x 12”, 2003.
Interactive kinetic sculpture: A wah-wah pedal, usually for electric guitar effects, is employed to control the sculpture, causing life casts of a pair of women’s feet to spin. The pedal causes the spinning to speed up and slow down, or to keep spinning indefinitely. This machine promises mastery, control, or power but only delivers a minor spectacle. The work posits futility and utility or the mechanistic aspects of beauty, sex and death.


The Galatea Loop

The Galatea Loop
mixed media, 50” x 50” x 50”, 2001.
Interactive kinetic sculpture: A praxinscope device with 24 life casts of a mouth, reflected by 24 mirrors. When the viewer spins the device, a moving image of a speaking woman is seen but not heard. Based on the Greek myth in which Pygmalion carves a woman, falls in love with the sculpture, whom Aphrodite brings to life. Explores the unitary and the massified, the impossibility of translation across history, culture.