[PROJECTS] VIDEOS PAST ABOUT

Circle Dancers
Generative Video Installation
2016

Circle Dancers is a two channel generative video installation in which the viewer is surrounded by clips of police hellicopters that randomly "chase" silhouettes of running human figures in a continuous circle from one screen to another facing screen and visa versa. This dance macabre is juxtaposed against endless glitchy multicolored maps of various US citiscapes. Documentation shown here is condensed into a single video channel for your viewing pleasure.

Destini Trancer
Reactive Video Installation
2011

The subject of this work is "Sunnette Spies," a prominent member of an Internet cult known as Destini. As a self-proclaimed "interdimensional portal," Spies is seen here breathing in and out of trance states in which she channels a variety of humans and objects, from Hitler to spiders to Elvis as a demon.

To experience the full force of Destini enlightenment, viewers are invited to manipulate the video simulation of Spies by laying hands on the trance controller module.

Choose a selection from America's Toughest Jukebox

 margaritaville

 crazy

 livin' la vida loca

 shout

 every breath you take

 tequila

 pretty in pink

 mmmBop

 (general documentation)

America's Toughest Jukebox
Mixed Media, Animation, Custom Software & Electronics
2010

America's Toughest Jukebox "takes requests." It plays a selection of cover songs performed by Joe Arpaio, whose identity has been fictionally re-cast from notorious sheriff to gruff lounge singer. In this alternate existence, Mr. Arpaio is a questionable crooner whose repertoire includes a number of unforgettable tunes. America's Toughest Jukebox affords customers a special opportunity to consider how things might have been if Sheriff Joe had chosen a different "calling," and to contemplate his sociopolitical impact in a poetic, casual, and darkly humorous light. The Scopitone, a film-based jukebox popular in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, provides inspiration for the overall aesthetic of America's Toughest Jukebox.

Note: This project was created for an exhibition at the Arizona State University Art Museum called Open for Business. The artists in the show were asked to work collaboratively with a local business of their choice to create an artwork. The collaborator I chose, a diner called "Sucker Punch Sally's," went out of business as I was building the jukebox. Other businesses were reluctant to incorporate America's Toughest into their decor, so unfortunately it ended up in the museum (as seen here).

 press (pdf)

Dead Reckoning
Interactive Video Installation
2010

"Dead reckoning" is an outmoded marine navigation system in which new directions are calculated from previous positions. One of the problems with this form of way-finding is that errors in the process build on one another, often leading to drastic disorientation.

This interactive video installation employs the strategy of dead reckoning to explore the current state of the fictional pirate Long John Silver, who has transmogrified over the past 100 years from an iconic rogue into the largest fast food seafood chain in the world and youtube superstar. Landlubbers are dared to take charge of the plastic captain's wheel, then bob in an apocalyptically banal sea of web videos indebted to the fabled seamanstaurant.

Simupathy
Custom built augmented reality system
2009

Simupathy is a webcam controlled software system that toys with the phenomenon of telematic psychotherapy. This augmented reality prototype "materializes" the act of pleading for anonymous help online, then heightens the awkward experience of third person observation of these lonely outcries by allowing a different kind of "interaction" to occur inside a hybridized digital/physical public space. The slightly transparent video signal of a random, mentally distressed youtuber attaches to the face of the system operator, thereby conflating the quasi-realtime facial actions of "patient" and "practitioner."

Snake Medicine
Reactive Video Installation
2008

Viewer proximity to projection screen results in personalized psychotherapy sessions from an "Internet therapist" of dubious credentials named Lauren Parks.

Gelding
3D Animation with Custom Projection System
2008

Gelding depicts a sideways galloping horse simulation trapped in orbital limbo. Part worn-out symbol, part anthropomorphized satellite, the phantasmic horsey performs a new kind of peripatetic southwestern american ritual.

The accompanying audio is a reworking of samples from Ennio Morricone's "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" soundtrack.

New Omens from an Empty House
Interactive Video Installation
2007

A collaboratively created (ASU Arts, Media, and Engineering + Metro Arts High School) interactive system temporarily installed at the Arizona State University Art Museum. This work is a response to Edward Hopper's "House by a Road" (c. 1942), which resides in the Museum's permanent collection. I designed a navigable 3D graphical interface that presents a re-stylized digital rendering of the house in the painting. Participants can navigate into different virtual rooms in the house by wielding a glowing green ball. Each room has different audio, video, and interactive components that were co-created with students from Metro Arts. Each student was asked to pay homage to Hopper by designing a room and creating audio based on their own domestic lives.

press (pdf download)

Giant Desires
15 Digital Prints and Video Installation
2007

I doubt that I would have thought about it as much as I did had it not been for the nauseating pink light that filled my apartment and kept me awake at night. Brightly illuminated and standing 30 feet tall, this colossal pink gorilla had taken up temporary residence atop the sporting goods store across the street. My initial feelings about it, born out of contempt for the absurdity of the marketing tactic, slowly gave way to a kind of obsession with others like it: massive ogres, smiling dragons, mystical wizards. Intrigued by the pervasive use of blow-ups for advertisement, I began to photograph them.

Giant Desires is a collection of commercial inflatables removed from their natural habitats (car lots, furniture stores, etc.) so that their purpose becomes murky, at best. The large scale images reveal each object's high degree of detail and craftsmanship, a mysterious phenomenon as most blow-ups receive only a glance from people speeding by in their vehicles. Equally puzzling is the embodiment of culturally loaded symbols and tropes, such as nationalism, aggression, fantasy, power, race, and sex, in these generic plastic forms. It is difficult to say whether they are laughable or offensive, but one thing is clear: These monstrosities are a fixture in the urban landscape, so we may as well get used to them. Oh wait, we already are...

Prosthesis for Whispering to Myself
Wearable 3D Print
2006

Corrective appliance for extrinsic motivation addicts.

Stereoperiscopic Optical Stimulator
Wearable 3D Print
2006

The S.P.O.S. allows one eye to surveil the other. A singular, stereoscopic image of one's own eyes appears to the wearer. (in other words, when you put on the goggles you see a periscopic reflection of each opposing eye (in "partitioned" parallax), which then forces both of your eyes to perceptually fuse into a single "hybridized" and disembodied eye gazing back at you). Uneasy enlightenment or recursive boredom typically onset after around 1-2 minutes of use. Things tend to get weirder from there if you're willing to push the time limit.

Generic Sneakers with Olfactory Augmentation
Wearable 3D Print
2006

To inhale the pleroma in the parking lot without burning your nose. (Human navigation by scent)

Carapace
Uhaul Video Installation
2005

Video poem in a void. Open to the public.

Double Penetration
War Propaganda
2004

Public video projection depicts erotically bored nose picking. Deep AutoCopulation occurs to the tune of a live audio feed of a US bombing campaign in Fallujah being broadcast in "realtime" through a megaphone onto a public street in Tempe, AZ.

absorber, disperser?
Reactive Video
2004

absorber, disperser? / reactive video shrine / 2004

Bodily position of an audience participant is tracked. Movement and proximity cause the video portrait to autonomically hyperventilate.

A Conversation That I Threw Down a Well
Audio, Video, Tubes, and Pipes
2004

Light glows from a plastic tube that I buried in a corporate garden plot in Tempe, AZ. Six feet below shines some Washington State Department of Transportation footage shot from a camera being lowered into a sewer. Audio derived from various personal family phone conversations emanates from other underground hoses nearby.

Grandma's Anxious Landscape
Mixed Media and Electronics
2004

Motion detection causes erratic shivering of a scaled-down replica of my grandma's former living room in a gated southwestern retirement community. Project was included in the book "Phoenix: 21st Century City."

Rhythm of Drowning Yourself
Mixed Media and Electronics
2004

Rocking chair moves to a wrecking ball metronome mirrored by swaying synthetic seaweed.