http://www.davidedwardwebber.com davidedwardwebber Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:12:04 +0000 http://www.davidedwardwebber.com en http://davidedwardwebber.com/Direct-Animation http://davidedwardwebber.com/following/davidedwardwebber.com/Direct-Animation Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:12:04 +0000 davidedwardwebber 2276109 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/Webber_layout_3.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="560" width_o="1000" height_o="837" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/Webber_layout_3_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/Webber_layout_2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="502" width_o="1000" height_o="750" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/Webber_layout_2_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/Webber_layout_4.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="495" width_o="1000" height_o="739" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/Webber_layout_4_o.jpg" align="left" /> ALPHABET SERIES Description The films in the Alphabet series explore direct animation and structural cinema. Using the 16mm celluloid as a canvas, the work explores the formal possibilities of film and the compositional strategies of time-based media. Direct or camera-less animation is a technique of working directly working on to the celluloid surface. I used the letters of the alphabet to organize the hundreds of experiments that explored the extended techniques of painting, scratching, or collaging directly on to film. Letter A Letter E Letter Y Prints <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t4_newz2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t4_newz2_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t6.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t6_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t7_Y_r3.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t7_Y_r3_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t7_Y_r4.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t7_Y_r4_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t8.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t8_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t10_m1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t10_m1_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t10_m2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_24x36_t10_m2_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_SB.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_SB_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t4_V2_z.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="365" width_o="2048" height_o="1117" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t4_V2_z_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.1_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.2_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.3.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.3_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.4.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_1.4_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_2_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_3.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t11_3_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t12.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="2048" height_o="1365" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2276109/L_Y_t12_o.jpg" align="left" /> http://davidedwardwebber.com/Physical-Computing http://davidedwardwebber.com/following/davidedwardwebber.com/Physical-Computing Tue, 08 Nov 2011 23:56:55 +0000 davidedwardwebber 2275742 Organic Interface #5 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/15_Webber_oi5.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="473" width_o="1024" height_o="723" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/15_Webber_oi5_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title Organic Interface #5 (Installation View) Medium Installation- Alberta spruce trees, custom analog electronics Dimensions 5’ Wide Date 2004 Description Organic Interface #5 is an interactive sound sculpture that uses two Dwarf Alberta Spruce trees as tactile antennas of a Theremin-like instrument. The trees are housed in a rolling speaker cabinet unit and are automatically engaged when a human body is within close proximity. Body contact with the plant increases pitch. Depending on how the plant is touched, one a can create a range of frequencies. The simultaneous connection of the two trees creates inter-modulations between two oscillators. A wall text explains proper interaction and suggests ideas on how to make music involving multiple participants. Explanation The Organic Interface Series is a body of work investigating organic matter as a mediatory control device for interactive electronic media. The goal for this particular permutation of the series was to develop a ecophonic musical instrument similar to a Theremin. Proximity sensitivity proved to be very difficult in this application; therefore, a tactile instrument was developed. The speaker-cabinet unit was designed to house two trees, one at either end, to facilitate collaboration amongst the audience. As a musical instrument Organic Interface #5 was successful because it possessed a wide sonic palate to create and shape sound. In traditional musical instrument terms, however, a “Houseplant Theremin” is not tremendously desirable because it doesn’t subscribe to the Western tempered scale. This piece intentionally frees one from preconceived notions of musical instruments, in addition to encouraging exploration and improvisation. Organic Interface #5 is totally interactive and allows for group participation and manipulation of sound. Often an audience member is totally taken by surprise by the idea of a plant as an electronic conduit of control. Normal associations are disrupted and the viewer is persuaded to re-evaluate their understanding of plants and the relationship between plants and electronics, advancing a new and different way of thinking about the role and involvement of plants and organic matter in our digital world. Technical Overview As an artist without an electrical engineering background, I approached this project systematically and initiated simple experiments that later became building blocks. The electronics involved in this series are widely varied depending on the type of interaction desired and the kind of plant used. After exploring and building a dozen Theremin circuits, I concluded that the most basic design worked best in this application. Typical Theremin capacitive resistive circuits were not successful in this application while resistive inductive circuits worked somewhat; different circuits are needed for each application. In experimenting with different plants as sensor antennas, I discovered that Alberta Spruce trees sound great and are resilient to excessive handling. In short, I assembled the piece together using a sensor circuit interfaced with a homemade synthesizer by an optical isolation device. Unfortunately, the other attempts in this series were unsuccessful, but each was an important research vehicle that led me to an actual functioning prototype. This project is only the beginning of technologies being developed for a new series of tactile interfaces that work with interactive media such as sound, video and the web. What I enjoyed most with the piece was the interaction of participants. Frustrations arose due to misunderstanding the piece or trying to replicate a known song. It was difficult for participants to get over preconceived notions of a traditional instrument. Organic Interface #5 forces the audience to reevaluate their relationship with nature and explore the relationship with organic matter as a mediator to digital media. Biotronic Research Module # 7 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/16_Webber_BRM7.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="502" width_o="2048" height_o="1536" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/16_Webber_BRM7_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title Biotronic Research Module # 7 (Installation View) Medium Installation- Houseplants, electronics and 286 Laptop Dimensions 12’ Wide Date 2003 Description Biotronic Research Module #7 is a large scientific multimedia sculpture using the rotation of plants to create a soundscape through an overly convoluted cascading signal chain. Like a Rube Goldberg sculpture, this piece ironically pushes complex technology to pointless extremes for a mesmerizing technotronic audiovisual experience. Explanation Biotronic Research Module #7 is a project from a series that investigates ‘acoustic ecology’ and the idea of technological progress. Acoustic ecology is the study of sound in natural environments and the impact of technology on it’s soundscape. The projects in this series are directly inspired by the large amounts of discredited scientific experiments and crackpot hypotheses that claim different kinds of sounds and music influence plants differently. The majority of this research has been completely disregarded due to variables in the scientific process. When my own legitimate experiments failed, I embraced the process and started making pseudo science sculptures. I was inspired to push the envelope of previously documented theories utilizing absurdist technology. I developed a pseudo scientific ecologist DJ research unit that created pulsating rhythms and video. I do believe plants actively respond to music; however, it is hard to objectively measure qualitatively or quantitatively. Technical Overview This piece was specifically built for the Ballad of Wires and Hands Exhibition at the New Art Center Newton during the Boston Cyber Arts Festival, 2003. This piece is a continuation of my previous project, AO2000, that flaunts it’s blatant miss-use of technology and convoluted engineering. The rack-mount unit consists of four turntables with houseplants spinning in a sequence programmed on a computer. Video cameras above the unit follow the motion of the houseplants positioned on the turntables. The revolutions of the plants on the turntables transform beats of the music through a cascading information chain. Television monitors fitted with light sensors control synthesizers’ sounds. The cacophony of music is then finally displayed as a waveform on the array of rack-mounted oscilloscopes. AO2000 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/17_Webber_AO2000.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="428" width_o="1640" height_o="1048" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/17_Webber_AO2000_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title AO2000 (Installation View) Medium Installation- Custom electronics and 286 Laptop Dimensions 10” Wide Date 2002 Project Overview

 The Automation Orchestra 2000 is an interactive musical robot made up of various ordinary household appliances, motors, home-made electronics, an acoustic guitar, and a cast-off computer. The music is produced by the motors striking different surfaces, and the appliances cycling on and off. AO2000 interprets audience location information, which changes the automation sequence of the music. The crucial aesthetic of the piece’s construction is its intentional use of low-tech materials, and its kludge-style execution. Goals My proposal Berwick Research Institute (BRI) residency program was to build a robot for the Artbots 2002 competition. The first of its kind, the competition was an exhibition of creative robots, showcasing the artistic potential of emerging technologies. One of my goals for the project was to create a metaphor for the deficiencies in language. I wanted to investigate the gaps or bridges of communication and of the multiplicity of meaning. Another goal was to use what was available, to cobble together an overly sophisticated system from simple components, rather than ordering brand-new, highly specialized equipment. During my residency, I conducted multiple tests that eventually became the building blocks for AO2000. Technical The robot’s primary brain is a 286 laptop computer I bought at the MIT Flea Market for $5. A program written in QBASIC interprets keyboard input and controls the sequencing of the music. Closed-circuit cameras observe the movement of the audience around AO2000. Light-activated relay boards attached to the TV screens trigger solenoids to pound the keyboard. These mechanical keystrokes tell the computer to automate different instruments. The computer controls the instruments via the printer port, which controls an 8-channel relay board. The relays turn the power on and off to the two blenders, two egg beaters, four groups of motors. The motors’ spinning shafts are attached to lever arms and stiff cords, striking and resonating the guitar’s strings, and in general causing a loud clattering. Aesthetics I knew I couldn’t compete along strictly technological grounds, coming from a non-profit arts lab without a robotics background. My solution was to go in the opposite direction. I deliberately built my robot as low-tech as possible, making clever use of materials that I had at hand. This methodology became a commentary on the techno-fetish trend in contemporary electronic arts. In addition, the robot processed information in an intentionally convoluted way. It would have been more direct for the light sensors to connect directly to the computer via an input port. Instead, the system of closed-circuit tv, light sensors, and solenoids formed an individual robotic sub-system, which communicated with the analysis and controlled the robot through an interface designed for humans; a keyboard. By making the interface needlessly convoluted, AO2000 illustrated deficiencies in communication and the comprehension of complex meaning. Language Extension #4 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/18_Webber_LE4.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="507" width_o="1024" height_o="775" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/18_Webber_LE4_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title Language Extension #4 (Installation View) Medium Installation- Two channel video projection Dimensions 3” Wide Date 2001 Description Two blenders sit on top of a TV mimicking the love / hate dialogues in soap opera videos. Blender noise becomes a vocal extension of the TV character, relaying sibilance of speech in mechanical form. Each voice’s pitch and loudness controls the speed and intensity of the blender, creating a sonic envelope of words. Explanation Language Extension #4 is from a body of works investigating psychoacoustics and the multiplicity of meaning in language. The conversation of TV characters is conveyed or implied through the mental combination of visual cues, and the sonic envelope that implies speech. This changes the perception of meaning by requiring one to rely on the visual reading of lips and gesture to decipher the sound-meaning produced by the blenders. It is a phenomenon where the brain pieces both sight and sound information together and naturally fills in the gaps. This work was influenced by the McGurk effect, a phenomenon that is a mismatch between auditory and visual signals and creating a third phoneme, different from both the original auditory and visual speech signals. Technical Overview The blenders are controlled by two homemade analog electronic circuits taking the audio and converting the sound amplitude into revolutions of blender speed. HD <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/19_Webber_HD.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="434" width_o="1024" height_o="664" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275742/19_Webber_HD_o.jpg" align="left" /> Description HD is a sound sculpture consisting of eight computer hard drives emitting various love / hate dialogues from soap operas. The hard drives have been transformed into speaker transducers emitting sounds through mechanical movement and also through sympathetic vibration of materials. The soap opera dialogues are stripped to a basic semblance of speech, conveyed individually through each hard drive. The eight hard drives are mounted to wall cabinet in two rows of four. The piece is designed to have four different conversations between the top and bottom drives. Explanation This piece is a continuation of a series of works dealing with psychoacoustics and the multiplicity of meaning of language. It takes a conversation and conveys it through a transducer where one can see the visual cues of mechanical motions that emit sonic envelopes of speech. Reception of meaning is taken in through sight and sound to piece the phonemes together. The psycho acoustic effect on the brain naturally fills in the gaps. One hears the envelope of sounds while reading the "lips" to decode the text. This banal hard drive becomes a personified voice reading out its data with a foreign tongue. The implication of these personalities suggests that it speaks from its own dramatized memories. Technical Overview This piece is made up of a variety of homemade electronics and a standard CD player. The prerecorded material is amplified to drive the electromagnetic coils of the motor. http://davidedwardwebber.com/Photography http://davidedwardwebber.com/following/davidedwardwebber.com/Photography Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:49:43 +0000 davidedwardwebber 2275408 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P1.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="242" width_o="1024" height_o="370" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P1_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P2.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="211" width_o="1024" height_o="323" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P2_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P3.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="223" width_o="1024" height_o="342" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P3_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P4.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="271" width_o="1024" height_o="415" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P4_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P5.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="258" width_o="1024" height_o="395" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P5_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P6.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="289" width_o="1024" height_o="442" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P6_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P7.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="278" width_o="1024" height_o="425" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2275408/Webber_P7_o.jpg" align="left" /> Multiple Exposure Photography Series The photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whose photographs often depicted aspects of the everyday, described his own work as the “exploration of the familiar.” This particular fascination of looking can be directly seen in his Equivalents cloud series. For nine years he routinely took photographs of clouds, serving as abstract equivalents of his own experiences and emotions. This active process of looking and evaluating relationships within aspects of my everyday life has informed my current practice. My pastime of cloud gazing and daydreaming has particular relevance to my recent work. In the process of looking at clouds we imagine things other than what is in front of us. This child-like conjuring of persons, places, or things is an important human process of “making something out of nothing.” The phenomenon of recognizing something in meaningless data is called pareidolia and has inspired these works, but also a larger metaphorical working process. These photographs and videos start with images from the real world, and through transformation they become hybrid forms. They confuse the boundaries of their reference and challenge the viewers’ perception of what they are seeing. Superimposing images through layering, I push them to varying degrees of density by creating simple composites, fields of color, and meshed textures. http://davidedwardwebber.com/Video-Installation http://davidedwardwebber.com/following/davidedwardwebber.com/Video-Installation Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:27:07 +0000 davidedwardwebber 2274838 Portrait #16 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/1_Webber_Portrait16.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="1024" height_o="683" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/1_Webber_Portrait16_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/2_Webber_Portrait16.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="544" width_o="1024" height_o="832" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/2_Webber_Portrait16_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title - Portrait #16 Medium - Installation- Five channel CRT Dimensions - 76"x28"x48" - DV NTSC 720x480 Duration - 40:00 Date - 2010 Portrait #16 Description Portrait #16 is a five channel video installation displayed in a horizontal row. This project is a part of a series of multi-channel video installations that revolve around formal, minimal, materialist, and structural cinema. Explanation The black dot constellations of petrified gum, tree branch shadows, reflections in puddles, shimmers of broken auto glass; these things are the punctuations of my walk to work. The urban landscape and my memories of it have been a part of my subject matter for some time, but recently I have taken on a multiple exposure process as a way of finding new horizons. This series is an investigation of the familiar everyday scenes of my surroundings and an exploration of visual relationships through superimposition. Portrait #14 <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/3_Webber_Portrait14.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="173" width_o="800" height_o="207" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/3_Webber_Portrait14_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/4_Webber_Portrait14.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="800" height_o="533" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/4_Webber_Portrait14_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title - Portrait #14 Medium Installation - Four channel CRT Dimensions 76"x28"x48" - DV NTSC 720x480 Duration - 35:00 Date 2009 Portrait #14 Description Portrait #14 is a 4 channel TV monitor video installation displayed in a horizontal row. Using my walk to work as a visual departure point, this video series are portraits of people and places in my daily life. Explanation Issues around perceptual phenomena string together my many different art projects. In this series, I am inspired by systems of sense perception and the brain’s fabrication of meaning. Perhaps the best way to understand the work is through theories of Cinematic Cognitivism, which uses cognitive perception theory to understand the comprehension of time-based media. James Peterson’s Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order – Understanding the American Avant-garde Cinema addresses this issue and provides a unique framework for examining experimental cinema. His view uses the Constructive Cognitive Theory that states, “The mind constructs a representation of the world by synthesizing sense data and prior knowledge.”(Peterson 13) Perception is not solely the reception of sense data by the brain, rather, it is processed and transformed by mental structures of stored information. Film-viewing perception is not a passive event, but an inherently dynamic process of building meaning where meanings are not found, but actually made. All viewing involves bottom-up (sensory) and top-down (conceptual) psychological processes in understanding events. Not only does the spectator take an active role in comprehending; they are also actually psychologically constructing the film. My current work presents a series of problems and issues that make it hard for the viewer to understand the work in a conventional cinematic sense. Without a protagonist or narrative, the work has much to do with one’s subjective interpretation of the subject matter and how the materials are composed. The subject matter of each image has its own implication, and by layering these, I create dynamic sets of meanings. New associations and implications are suggested through the collision of different video clips as they rub up against each other in their evolution through time. Residue <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/5_Webber_Residue.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="800" height_o="533" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/5_Webber_Residue_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/6_Webber_Residue.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="178" width_o="800" height_o="213" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/6_Webber_Residue_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/7_Webber_Residue.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="800" height_o="533" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/7_Webber_Residue_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/8_Webber_Residue.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="525" width_o="800" height_o="627" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/8_Webber_Residue_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title - Residue Medium - Three channel CRT display video installation Dimensions 72"x 28"x 60" - Pedestals variable Duration - 42:00 Date 2008 Description The installation piece Residue is a three channel TV monitor piece displayed as a triptych. The duration of the full cycle is 45 minutes and is meant be presented in a non-cinematic context. Explanation My older sister Eleanor insists that I maliciously cut off her nose even though I have absolutely no recollection of doing so. Apparently I did indeed cut off the tip of her nose when I was approximately three years old. As her story goes, I was playing with the family silverware as usual, but suddenly, I walked over to her and hacked off a big chunk of her nose with a steak knife. My mother’s story was that she found my sister screaming bloody murder while I was innocently playing with the silverware. Whether or not it was a knife or a French cheese slicer is still up for family debate, but one would think that I would remember such a transgressive event. This story has been ritually told over and over to chastise me in front of all my friends. The remarkable aspect of this story is that it has actually come to a point where I now think I can remember this event, even though I know I have no recollection of it. While making Residue, which is derived from my father’s Super8 family movies, my understanding of my childhood memories has totally changed. I have vivid memories of events documented in this footage, but to my horror, I found out that this particular footage was shot long before I was born. These memories were actually constructed through our yearly ritual screening of these films, where we retold the stories about Henry, the enormous stuffed animal. Henry now lives somewhere within the grey gelatinous areas of my earliest memories, that are congealed through these visual stimuli. In the piece Residue, I am investigating processing systems of time-based material as metaphorical representation of remembrance. Our senses are preprocessed by our brain making relations to our templates of prior knowledge. When you see or remember something you are actually recalling multiple memory fragments together. Such a recollection process inspired this video; I wanted to represent what this process would possibly look like. Taking my spotty terrain of memories as a point of departure for creating the work, I use these distortions and ambiguities as a means of production. The use of layering in Residue is intended to emulate the cognitive process of perception in the hopes of creating an evocative visual experience, to lure people into considering their recollections and reference. The main parameter at play in this piece is the level of recognition of the subject matter through a process of layering and superimposing images on top of each other. I went through many iterations of layering and processing to find the right stacking relationship of the images. The tool of reverse chroma keying allowed me to pick out shapes by their color and stack them up into the final composite image. Through the compositing process, I was able to select the parts that are revealed, which creates a complex dynamic of pushing and pulling of recognizability. With twenty layers of video intermodulating each other, fading in and out, the image varies from a moving texture to a simple image. The main aspect of the processing is to leave traces or residues that can only hint at their origins. These once idealized memories are now confused in their legitimacy. They have become an overwhelming network of relations that has been renegotiated through this work. I specifically wanted to use family footage so I could use my own memories and discrepancies to match my formal abstractions of the images. The piece is composed using the multi-channel format to emphasize the multiplicity of perceived events. I first organized the footage into many different categories, such as holidays, places, or color choices. The process then became a larger negotiation of the different evocative graphics and iconographic implications. I wanted to create a state of suspension and expectation where one may enter these images and conjecture their meaning and one’s relation to them. 22nd Street, Philadelphia PA <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/9_Webber_22ndStreet.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="800" height_o="533" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/9_Webber_22ndStreet_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/10_Webber_22ndStreet.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="223" width_o="800" height_o="267" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/10_Webber_22ndStreet_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/11_Webber_22ndStreet.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="222" width_o="800" height_o="266" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/11_Webber_22ndStreet_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title- 22nd Street, Philadelphia PA Medium- Two channel video projection Dimensions- 30' Wide- Two 9' x 13' screens Duration - 18:40 Date 2007 Description The multi-channel video piece 22nd Street, Philadelphia PA. is part of a series of works that are abstract documents, topologies, diaries, and mine fields that are based on personal landmarks. For better or worse, I have spent large amounts of time waiting. The process of waiting for the train to get to school consisted of long hours of gazing at mundane objects and daydreaming. Creative pastimes of counting cigarette butts, avoiding stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, and chasing pigeons are time-killing preoccupations that are a large part of my connections to home. A particular mindset results from relying on public transportation and it has given me an appreciation for monotonous waiting and looking. In this series, I am making works of longer duration that emphasize this perceptual mindset of temporal suspension within moving images. The majority of what we see is forgotten. What we do remember is just vague impressions or patterns. It is these unremarkable places, scenes, and images that I gravitate towards because they are the first things we tend to forget, but they are what we spend the most time looking at. It is important for these works to have an incompleteness, in order to emphasize the necessary role of the viewer. The montage of layering structure and material processing evokes an awareness of one’s perception by emphasizing phenomenological experiences. Instead of a cinematic theatrical viewing, these works exist in an “expanded cinema” installation format. The presentation of the screen and projection of light are laid out as sculptural material in relation to the architectural dimensions of the gallery space. The pictorial space of the image is transformed by viewer’s ability to move around it, therefore providing differing perceptual fields. McAndrews Road, Alfred NY <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/11_Webber_McAndrews.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="446" width_o="800" height_o="533" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/11_Webber_McAndrews_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/13_Webber_McAndrews.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="223" width_o="800" height_o="267" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/13_Webber_McAndrews_o.jpg" align="left" /> <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/14_Webber_McAndrews.jpg" border="0" width="670" height="223" width_o="800" height_o="267" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/1/60784/2274838/14_Webber_McAndrews_o.jpg" align="left" /> Title- McAndrews Road, Alfred NY Medium- Two channel video projection Dimensions- 13' Wide- Two 9' x 13' screens parallel Date- 2007 Description After being confronted with a drastic shift to a rural environment, my artistic attention gravitated towards making sense of my connections to landscape. My artistic points of entry into the rural landscape started happening when I came across abandoned buildings and houses-spaces which I am used to. These places spawned the work McAndrews Road, Alfred NY. which evolved from a single-channel video into a larger two-channel projected installation. Developing these pieces became a daily ritual of searching out objects or aspects of the scenery that I find familiar, different, or graphically evocative, and documenting them. This process became a means of making work and a way of understanding where I was and where I am now. When I gathered footage, I fixated on singular items that have equivalents to my own understanding of space and my memories of it. Looking at and evaluating these relationships they became points of departure for composing these works.