ARTIST STATEMENT
"Shaded Bandwidths"
An interactive sound and video installation, explores the phenomenon of ghosting in wireless communication: the interference of radio transmissions by architectural and geological formations. Within the installation bridge and radio heighten the experience of motion and time texture. The room itself becomes a tuned instrument. As a social space the room invites collective activity . As an intimate space, the architectural scale becomes human. It takes time and and coordinated movement by the audience/ participants to achieve the balances and proportions of Shaded Bandwidths.
Interactivity
Stillness and place are as important in this interactive landscape as motion. On the dvd we used a light sensing telemetry system. There are layers of sounds synchronized to shift in complex relationships with the video lumin essence and position.
In the room three of Polaroid's ultrasonic Rangefinders@ (autofocus) are aimed out from the main screen. They sense the audience using echo along thirty foot lines. The audience in threshold areas ( near, middle, far, left, center, right in relation to the main screen) activate key numbers (via midi controls of the computer program) which triggers prepared material (stored in nine chapters of a DVD). The person closest to the screen determines the next video/sound environment (chapter) played. Wave shaping and transposition of many layers of sound events also happens through the computerized matrix and its control of the sound synthesis and processing system. Michael Wu, a graduate of MIT's Media Lab, regularly ( for over 15 years) has worked with Liz to construct new (C++)software for this installation. Visually, the focussed projection on the center screen responds to the shifting perspective of the audience in an open matrix.
The projections on Anney's trapezoidal side panels create a visceral passageway, where the participant recreates radio interference and its optical equivalent (shadow). The metal shapes within the panels are interactive using radio frequency capacitance fields . The fields function on the same principle as a broken TV antenna or Theremin; when you move around the room your body conducts to ground better than air and changes the sound/image. Liz pioneered the concept of sound installations by using radio frequency capacitance fields( 1970) and ultrasonics that change sound structures in her installations.
More on "Shaded Bandwidths":
Franklin Furnace http://www.franklinfurnace.org/tfotp01/
Lincoln Center http://www.filmlinc.com/nyvf/nyvf.htm
BIOGRAPHIES
Liz Phillips
Liz Phillips was born is Jersey City, New Jersey in1951. She has made and exhibited interactive sound and multimedia installations at numerous art institutions, alternative spaces, festivals, and public spaces for the past thirty years. In 1981 she co-founded Parabola Art Foundation, Inc, New York. Phillips Lives in New York and is teaching in the Art Department at Purchase College, state university of New York.
Anney Bonney
Has spent the last 25 years in New York as a multi-disciplinary/media artist. In 1992 she co-founded Antenna TV, an artists public access program. She is also one of the video improvisors(live mixing) with Benton Bainbridge, and was creating the videos for Anthony DeMare's one man show being presented at HERE in April 2001. She is presently teaching Video Art at the State University of New York in Purchase.
Credits
Liz Phillips, interactive system and audio
Anney Bonney, video and projections
Michael Wu ,custom C++ software program
Special Thanks:
Kathy Brew, The Escher Group, Philliip Baldwin (design consultation). Earl Howard and Mary Lucier (audio studio and equipment loans), MetroClean Express Corp.
This project was made possible with funding received from NYSCA Individual Artists Media Program through Parabola Arts Foundation and Franklin Furnace.
Photos by Charlie Samuels www.charliesamuels.com
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