Complex Fields

I've been working over here instead for awhile now. Now I'm ready to show you.

Department of Rhythmanalysis: On Location

Commissioned project for Blackbird, an online literary magazine at Virgina Commwealth University. Animation in sound and drawn image. Console as story/poem.

Zeno Boundary: Midwest Biennial

Zeno Boundary has returned as a gallery and web-based project. On display at Depauw for the Midwest Biennial, and online at Turbulence. Please get some people together and contribute!

Mirror Site (Back to Back)

Four live cameras and two screens across two locations provide a temporal visual link every thirty minutes. Part of the Balance and Power exhibition for the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis MA.

Dept. of Rhythmanalysis: Dupage

The Department of Rhythmanalysis implements a site-specific state-of-the-art system for the control and surveillance of remote and local rhythms, through an array of indicators, sensors, buttons and switches.

Zeno Boundary

Part of the Chronozone series, this work invited visitors to Public Art Lab's Mobile Studios project to contribute images to an animated composite representation of city squares in Bratislava, Sofia, and Budapest.

Mirror Site (Chat)

This iteration of the Mirror Site series linked galleries in Prague and Bratislava to facilitate a silent, live interaction via writing instead of typing or speech. Gallery visitors in the two cities communicate via live scripting in Slovak, Czech, or English.

Agent Tracker

Installed at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, this panel purported to monitor the progress of an "agent" through the world, originating at the gallery and journeying far before returning to the gallery at the exhibition's close.

Dept. of Rhythmanalysis: Krannert

First in a series of site-specific, interactive monitoring systems, this unit was constructed for the Krannert Art Museum at UIUC.

Mirror Site (Converge)

This series pairs live camera views to create illusory shared spaces. Here the fiction/lie is total, as one half of the link is wholly unaware of the other. Times Square tourists meet collegiate Computer Science researchers and students.

Alarmbell.org

This unrealized proposal answered a call for projects themed around the idea of a village bell as means of communication. The call was issued as a memorial to Community Media activist Dirk Koning.

Monument to Everyday Deaths

This unrealized proposal pairs a live webcam view with archived stills of the same view, chosen to coincide with the officially recorded times-of-death of local citizens.

Breaking

Random but assured interruption via loudspeaker array and pre-programmed sonic blast. Gallery installation in the form of a suspended speaker array, and later developed as a standalone desktop application.

Avoxia

A new service that will facilitate the use of phones for connecting without conversing, for listening to the incidental and unintended sounds of telephonic space that make conversation possible. The proposal placed sixth out of 300 entries in V_2's Fusedspace Competition.

Here and There

Two identical red emergency lights on either side of a gallery wall. One light lit up at the top of each hour on a timer. The other lit up when I called it by cell phone. I called the lamp for the duration of the exhibition, attempting to keep the two lamps lit simultaneously.

Chronozone

A series of performative projects about telepresence, conducted with BURUNDI/13m3, an artist group in Bratislava, Slovakia. We attempt to span the geographical distances between us through critical engagement with popular media and tech.

Call to Call

Random pairs of 2-minute clips play in sync across two television screens. The clips facilitate the illusion of failed or successful connections between the two phones. Audio reveals that even apparently successful connections avoid conversation.

The Other End

Visitors to this web-based project can send live signals to each other using their computer spacebar to light the page's two indicator lights. The project also features various standalone units constructed for gallery display.

Eddy

Televisions arranged in an open circle display a progressively more delayed broadcast of a live CNN feed. The news crawl appears to continue around the room.

New Models of Time 1: Ourobouros

A hand-drawn animated loop portrays the ancient symbol of cyclical time. Here the snake keeps crawling but we never get to the end.

Monitor

This series of computer-generated videos borrows from cinema to create surveillance feeds of prisoners in charge of their domains.

Live

A DVD provides the temporal and graphic effect of CNN without the content - ideal ambient assurance of progressed information.

Site Unseen

This web project investigates non-visual methods of establishing pictorial truth. It features a collection of photographs shot according to strictly applied compositional strategies.

Meijer Project

Over one hundred hand-drawn receipts from Meijer Superstores reveal a careful pattern of rhythmic purchases, organized by color, shape, and function.

Bluebridge

A commissioned project for the 2002 National Community Media Access Conference in Grand Rapids, MI. Link here to the original proposal for a realized project that employed live television broadcast as well as sited projection.

Reporter

More of a sketch than a full piece, this project reflects some of my early interest in CNN in relation to the events of 9/11. An early reaction to the events.

Metronomad

A backpack with speakers facilitates the recording and playback of environmental sounds. Playback is triggered by foot-sensors - each foot can be assigned a unique sound.

Cross

I anonymously take on the role of an audible crosswalk signal for a busy intersection. Performance lasts for the duration of a workday.

Leading the Guide

The second of a series of interventions in which I mimic the gait and pace of strangers. In this case, I follow ahead of each person, keeping myself in plain sight.

Step / Right / Up

First in a series of live works in which I try to reproduce the rhythms of others' walks in real time, tying their actions to mine.

Drive

An audio work that mixes together ambient sounds of my commute by car, using the car's own technology.

Mnemonicon

A navigation tool for determining routes through current spaces according to routes taken in other cities - walking through one place as if it were another.

Tracking

A stationary camera records the exit of a commuter train's passengers through the station's long row of turnstiles. The audio track contains only the clunky, uniform sounds of my own feet, serving as foley artist to a trainload of pedestrians.

Timezone

A set of custom clock-driven devices designed to point towards each other across long distances, twice a day. Designed to facilitate co-presence without connection.

Sweep

The camera stays in the studio, monitoring a marked portion of the floor while I roam the city, recording audio and marking the city in a similar way.

Loop

Video work for two screens, in which the beginning and end are reunited, mapping the first half of a walk onto the second.

Kevin Hamilton, researcher and instructor
at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign* kham@uiuc.edu