Current_ Generator
monitor, endoscope, TouchDesigner, background support, laptop stand, gaffers tape, zip ties, cables. 2024
Current_Generator is an interactive video installation made in response to the acceleration of machine learning, the magnitude of digital images rendered daily using this technology, and the role of the human collaborator in the midst of this hyper production.
The installation utilizes a monitor lying flat on a pedestal underneath a suspended endoscope to perform video feedback. The viewer is invited to infiltrate the video signal by moving their hands under the camera to generate additional feedback currents across the screen. Video feedback requires subtle camera movements for the image to continuously replicate itself and generate complex patterns, textures, and color variations. When users interact with their hands, skin tones generate dynamic variations in color and patterns. This interactivity is further mediated using TouchDesigner, a visual programming software that enables media artists to create custom programs to run installations and performances. The program designed as part of Current_Generator mixes pre-recorded video clips of different water bodies (oceans, waterfalls, and floods) from footage shot over the last year, mapping my own movements across landscapes. These video clips combined with the live camera, simulate additional “currents” or visual effects across the screen.
The project's first iteration, Current_Generator.v1 was recently installed in the Lee Gallery at Clemson University as part of the Art Department’s faculty exhibit, Artists Teaching: Teaching Artists. Throughout the six-week exhibition, interactions with the installation were recorded to produce media files for extracting still frames to make prints and handmade books. This installation and its iterative process demonstrates a form of generative art-making machine.
The next phase of the project is currently in development and will include collaborations with machine and software engineers at Clemson. Additionally, I will work with Dana Potter, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Furman University. She founded HiLo Arts Labs, a curatorial and collaborative printmaking project that connects print and new media works. Working with Prof. Potter, the collaborative printmaking portion of the project will transform still frames from the media files recorded during the exhibit this fall into an editioned portfolio of fine art prints. Using visuals initially generated through the iterative process of video feedback, a set of variable prints emphasizes the generative qualities of printmaking.
Recording with audio looper
Print interventions with video feedback:
Video footage of water bodies (floods, ponds, swimming pools, waterfalls, Pacific and Atlantic ocean) used to create time displacement in TouchDesigner:
