dishwife  [2004 04 19]
End-User Application
[Media: Digital photography, Audio]

The term dishwife is taken from fishwife: a vulgar, abusive woman. This is the premise for the piece. Photographs of my sink after a week and a half without washing dishes, combine with audio of me washing said dishes and uncomfortable cello sounds to create a light, yet tense atmosphere.

The application runs two ways. Either the spacebar can be pressed to advance images through the 'story' a frame every 30 seconds, or users can manually advance the story using the keys 0-9 to each of ten frames. These frames were intended to be controlled by an external device (a placemat with contacts sewn in), but time and attention had other ideas. As it is, the story is mostly coherent in automatic progression.

The photographs are layered onto one another to lighten areas in the application. A sporadic flash of brightness, mimicking soap bubbles, adds to this lightening. The audio of cello music is looped against a pattern which corresponds for each frame in the story. The audio of dish-washing loops randomly throughout each frame.

OCC Frontpage  [2004 03 19]
Webpage Design
[Media: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP]

A request to design the front page of a local collective.

onLoad
Logo in lower-right corner, assorted black horizontal bars, randomly arranged. Generated by PHP.

onMouseOver...
for black horizontal bars, word or word-phrase appears. Styled DIVs with JavaScript.

onMouseDown...
for OCC logo, or if onMouseOver hits timeout (finishes). All horizontal bars become outlines around text, as in second screen. Links highlight with gray onMouseOver. Styled DIVs with JavaScript.

onMouseOver...
for OCC logo, black horizontal bars move to the upper left. The bars are returning to their 'appropriate' positions as indicated in the last screen. Standard IMG with JavaScript.

f(light).  [2004 03 15]
Sculptural Light
[Media: Recycled printer paper, 5V lights, Sweep generator]

They sit in the corner and mind their own.

project_book  [2004 02 28]
End-User Application
[Media: Scanned images, Input tablet]

An 'auto-layout-generator' developed as a continuing experiment in automated design. Taking 5 images from 12 unique categories, the application randomly recombines them with different offsets. There are 104 images total, and thus in excess of 12 trillion (~104 ^ 5) viewing possibilities.

The images correspond to my influences from art and design. Some are pages from books on modern art, graphic design, dot-to-dots and origami. Others are Japanese, Norwegian and German language texts (books, magazines, workbooks). The layouts fade from one to the next in a calm traversal through the history of my life to present.

Baby Album  [2003 12 10]
End-User Application
[Media: Digital photography and illustration, Audio]

Pastel colors and quiet sounds ask the user to take a playful approach to flipping through a baby album. Blocks of colors mimic painting or coloring with crayons as noises play when the user drags across the image area. Play is encouraged.

The piece is a brief catalog of a baby's life. Audio of the baby's environment plays in the background. Low cooing and rattling noises are heard. Additionally, each time the user clicks on the main image area, a louder, more definite baby noise plays. All audio is very subtle and likely to be missed at first.

A new take an a relatively banal subject. Once the user has colored enough to make the illustration go away, sections of the photograph appear. The baby album need not be a linear experience.

fall(ing).  [2003 10 25]
Environmental Installation
[Media: Photographic projection, Audio]

A world in which nature is presented as alive and captivating. The usual and unusual are encountered, with sound and image out of context. Images stretch and fall across the canvas on which it is projected. The wind is more intense and lively than the images suggest, yet the audio complements the movement of the images. All of these combined lend themselves to a singular environment for both the natural and the technological.

This piece represents one of a series of explorations I've been taking into controlled environments and (originally) user interaction. Due to difficulties with hardware, the interaction has had to wait.

I draw on the familiar from my audience, I use the sign of tree branches to signify nature -- something familiar to everyone. Similarly, audio of leaves rustling and birds singing in the background indicated a connection with the natural world. By using two major senses to signify nature, I hope to make an immediate connection and draw the audience into what amounts to a fictionalised world.

This world is one in which nature is presented as alive and captivating. The drone of the audio with the repetitive falling of images hold the audience by being both usual and unusual. Usual in that they are forms and sounds, seen and heard daily. Unusual in that they are out of context, in a small room being projected across a wall. And, although the audio and visual material is truthful in recording (ie, there was no manipulation, only editing), the way in which it's presented strays from the truth. The images stretch and fall across the canvas on which it is projected. The wind is more intense and lively than the images themselves suggest, yet the audio complements the movement of the images. All of these combined lend themselves to a singular environment for both the natural and the technological.

Conversation Piece 003  [2003 07 24]
Room-Scale Installation
[Media: Audio, Video projection, Slide projection, Video monitor]

A young couple is having a conversation. They are speaking in a park, and appear to be quite happy to be together. However, the conversation is somehow disconnected. Sentences and phrases of the conversation are 'randomised'.

The conversation is about ... nothing in particular. Coherent sentences occasionally occur, but such sentences are fleeting. Similarly too, the dialog seems to fit the actions of the man and the woman, but that is transient. In all, the music and the conversation offer an opportunity to explore what is heard at any time and place; a moment to try to make sense of the words of conversation, or to ignore them altogether.