Dimension X was created for VIVO’s 2011 Signal and Noise festival. The commission was to create an interactive media art piece out of VIVO’s near 40-years of collected media production gear. I was given a room to use at VIVO and filled it with mounds of the choicest specimens … then began performing experiments. There was a large variety of gear for a range of purposes from numerous eras of technological development. There was a lot of old analog gear using cassettes, reel-to-reel tape, and film – and there was a bunch of early computer gear, much of which was too outdated to be very useful in a practical sense. There were cameras, tvs, monitors, speakers. Even a big old digital projector. All kinds of fun.
After spending some time with this gear-pile, I started to see there was a conceptual connection between these technologies. All of them were extending human perception through some dimension or other : they allow us to hear and see things at a distance across time or space. And most of them use electromagnetism to do it. This idea of using electromagnetism – an invisible, primordial force – to extend human experience and capability got me thinking about the development of these media technologies in terms of magic and science fiction – a machine that would magically transport you to some hocus pocus galaxy. “Dimension X” is this machine.
The installation at VIVO consisted of four parts:
- A number of "oscillovisions" – old computer monitors transformed into oscilloscopes
- An analog wave synthesizer used to create sound to feed the oscilloscopes
- A video feedback loop that projected an image of the installation back onto itself – creating an illusion of infinite regression
- A wall covered in old gear from VIVO’s archive.
Though I no longer have access to VIVO’s full archive of gear, I do have the other three parts and intend to use them in various configurations in future installations.
For example, recently the Oscillovisions were used to generate visuals for live music at the 2011 SquareWaves festival.
This coming Thursday, Dec. 15th, I’ll be displaying Dimension X in a relatively stripped down form : the Oscillovisions and the sound generator at eatART’s "art with energy exhibit".