FIELD STUDIES
The two-dimensional rectilinear shape of the modern multimedia display, or โscreenโ, was established through successive economically sustainable technological innovations. Its rectangular form was derived from constraints in technology and economy, not aesthetics, not psychology, nor other social factors. Yet the form of the conventional screen dictates specific social and spatial organizing conditions. Such conditions include the movie theater, the living room television, the desktop computer display or multi-display, the lone mobile screen, the VR headset, etc. While some of these forms of display permit a shared experience they predominantly isolate the user, from the world, from society, and from truth.
Considering the digital display as a malleable, three-dimensional material in the toolbox of designers and architects, what other social and spatial conditions might arise from new and alternate forms of video display? What are the extremes, limitations, and dangers of a single-user society? How does content choreograph society? What if large-scale public media devices existed? What form would they take? How could the public interact with these forms? How can alternative forms of display positively affect society?
The Field Studies series explores these questions through a number of model-scale vignettes composed with a decidedly simple and accessible formal vocabulary of miniature human figures, light-emitting screens, and landscapes. Each scene depicts an existing or alternative display form, and the associated societal organizations each form dictates. These scenes include fields of isolated mobile users, celebrations of massive media monuments, riots of individuals armed with media-weapons, and speculative utopian landscapes populated with numerous alternative media forms.
The first vignettes in the Field Studies series, including Center Pivot I, Watering Hole I, and Black Plane I have been developed for exhibition atop pedestals within the context of a gallery, museum, or home. Later iterations will be designed at a larger scale to be displayed outdoors where they will become site-specific engagements with the natural landscapes.
ITERATIONS
Different projected content can bring new meaning to the same physical sculpture. Notable explorations of content are notated as numbered iterations (abbreviated iter.) on physical works.
(iter. 1, Social Media Feedback), 2017
Live video input
Go live to an organically-grown social following. Realtime video of the viewer is streamed directly to a new crop of screens.
(iter. 2, Dead Air), 2017
Infinite duration (multiple asynchronous loops)
Another crop lost to static blight.
(iter. 3, Share Cropping), 2017
60 seconds, loop
Digital animation on mixed media sculpture
(iter. 4, Cultivation), 2018
3 minutes, loop
Digital animation on mixed media sculpture
Made-to-order
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