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"Eight-Bit
Ant Farm"
completed September
2002
29" X 29" X
29"
Collaborative artwork with
Remo Campopiano
and Jonathan Schull
Dorsky Museum installation 8/02
Mills Gallery installation 3/03
See also my page detailing the design and construction of this piece.
Data derived from the change in positions of ants and people from one sampled video frame to the next is mapped to an 8X8 grid and then sent to the lighted balls. The display screen shows red and yellow circles to indicate detected differences between sampled images. Red lit balls indicate the movement of ants, while yellow ones indicate movement of people. The lights update row by row in a slow raster scan. Data on people movement is also sent to the second box of balls. These balls are triggered to jump up in the locations of the grid that indicate motion within the view of the overhead camera. The sound is somewhat like popcorn popping in short bursts every 10 seconds. The bouncing balls are fired by solenoids in a raster sequence that creates staccato bursts as rows of balls are fired into the air inside their cube. |
This artwork was first conceived by Remo Campopiano specifically for a show that he was invited to participate in on the theme of complexity theory. Remo invited me to collaborate on the project shortly after we met. Jonathan who is an old friend of Remo's had already committed to working on the project. Remo had worked with ants before in other large scale installations and felt that ants would contribute the essential nature of chaos to the work. My contribution was the idea of ping pong balls bouncing around inside an acrylic cube to convey a visual sense of chaos. The idea of lit ping pong balls evolved from the creative dynamic of the collaboration. Jonathan brought computer programming and advanced conceptual skills to the project. It is his software that unifies the piece by processing and visually interpreting the video images from 2 cameras. |
These views show
the the computer screen showing ant and people derived imagery and illuminated
pong balls. |
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See also my page detailing
the design
and construction of this piece.
EXHIBITION HISTORY:
8/14/02 - 11/24/02 | "Complexity"
Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz, NY. |
3/20/03 - 7/6/03 | "info@blah: Overload and
Organization" The Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA. |
9/03 - 11/03 | Federal Reserve Gallery, Washington, DC. |
See my
résumé
- includes exhibitions, sales, comissions, reviews, publications