1. MIXER

Above: Promo reel I edited from the first year of MIXER, 2007-8.

MIXER is a quarterly event series that I initiated to showcase Eyebeam resident artists working in performance, interactive, and participatory art, who previously did not have an outlet for presenting work of this nature. The series was also developed as a way to expand Eyebeam’s visibility through a consistent, branded event with appeal to broader audiences as well as sponsors. Launched in November 2007, MIXER has become a highly successful series generating critical attention and mainstream press (NY Times, WNYC) and attracting audiences exceeding 1400 people per two-night event.

I curate MIXER based on a different theme each time, selecting artists through direct invitation as well as an open call for proposals. The event combines interactive installations and live performances to create a truly unique environment. In addition to curating and project managing the installation and event production, I also create the spatial design and graphics with consultation and support from technical and design crew.

The most recent event, MIXER: OLYMPIAD (March 12-13, 2010), was themed around the Olympics, and included opening and closing ceremonies, competitions, awards, and performances. In collaboration with participating artists, we developed a narrative around the five competing nations of the MIXER OLYMPIAD, with everyone in attendance taking on the role of a competitor and fan for each nation. Below are selected images including visual materials that I designed (logos, flags) and documentation from the event.

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2. FEEDBACK

Above: FEEDBACK installation view

I co-curated and project managed the FEEDBACK exhibition and related events on environmental sustainability, and conceived and produced the Eco-Vis Challenge, an environmental data visualization design challenge included as part of the exhibition. FEEDBACK was initially conceived and developed through Eyebeam’s sustainability research group, a collection of fellows and resident artists, staff, alumni, and invited community members who met on a monthly basis to discuss new work. For more information about the exhibition, go here.

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PERSONAL/CREATIVE

My personal creative work fuses the tactics of ethnographic filmmaking and DJ mixing. My video projects explore how cultural histories are represented and memorialized in public space – from the built environment to media space.

1. WORLD’S FAIR

World's Fair video still

World's Fair video still

World’s Fair looks to the world’s fair exposition as the model for many conditions of contemporary life and leisure – shopping malls, theme parks, and museums, as well as the use of media production and exhibit display methods to sell consumer products, technological innovations, and nationalistic ideologies.

World’s Fair is comprised of twelve 1-minute video vignettes that combine photo collage, still image animation, documentary video, and sampled film footage to form a fictitious place, hypothesizing about what might have been and at the same reinforcing what has come to be. The work juxtaposes the contemplative, detached vantage point of the photo panoramic with the flat, aggressively abstract space of the video footage – a shopping mall amusement park ride, a geodesic tropical greenhouse, the Greek-like ruins of Philip Johnson’s New York State Pavilion. These video images play with the tension between nature and the synthetic; controlled environments and the wild; vicarious (virtual) experience and imminent threat, pleasure and violence.

Exhibited on the BBC Big Screen Liverpool (2008), in a group exhibition at City Without Walls, Newark, NJ (2008), and in a solo exhibition at University of Missouri-St. Louis Gallery 210 (2006-7). Selected work from World’s Fair also screened as part of traveling project, VIBE: Video In the Built Environment presented at Federation Square, Melbourne, AU; Vidi Festival, Valencia, SP; London Study Center, London, UK; UFVA Conference, Orange, CA (2006-7).

2. Westward

Westward video still

Westward installation view

Westward examines representations of the American West and notions of progress as seen through the Museum of Westward Expansion in St. Louis, MO. Video documentation of visitors’ interactions with Museum exhibits is juxtaposed with sound reconstructed from Hollywood westerns. The work is a meditation on that which is lost as a result of colonization and technological progress, and how our culture desires to reanimate the collective memory.

Exhibited in a group exhibition at Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN (2005), and in solo exhibitions at Cardinal Stritch University Art Gallery, Milwaukee WI, (2004) and St. Louis University Museum of Art (commissioned, 2003).

3. Old World

Old World video still

Old World Installation view

In Old World the pastoral landscape acts as the stage set for historical reenactment, collective memory, and vicarious projection into the past. Video documentation from Old World Wisconsin, an outdoor museum of rural history, is combined with appropriated film footage of human/animal interaction in the Midwest “pioneer” landscape. The savage wild is tamed by civilized culture, remembered as an idyllic past.

Commissioned and exhibited as part of a fellowship exhibition at Institute of Visual Art, Milwaukee, WI (2004).

4. Indian Gaming

Indian Gaming video still

Indian Gaming installation view

Indian Gaming juxtaposes representations of American Indian culture as depicted in strikingly similar fashion in both the Milwaukee Public Museum and a local bingo casino run by the Potawatomi tribe. Sound and images from both spaces overlap in different ways with each iteration, calling attention to how the cultural “other” is experienced and understood.

Exhibited at Institute of Visual Art, Milwaukee, WI (2003).

VIDEO SAMPLES

World’s Fair: Panorama (1 minute excerpt)

World’s Fair: Swing Drop (1 minute)

Video installation reel featuring Old World, Westward, and Indian Gaming (1min:25sec)