The Strands Project
Three part video installation. 2007.

Short essay written for Glowlab below.

Strands
8/31/07 – 9/10/07
Greenpoint Brooklyn NYC
For many, the great attractions of city living are the diverse
amenities located in a close physical proximity to home or
workplace. Running errands- purposeful movement between
spaces of specialized functionality- can be done with remarkable
speed and efficiency. As this type of movement becomes habitual,
one reaches a level of sophistication regarding the range of
personal behavior considered relevant in a typical establishment
or situation.

Strands is a three part video installation set in
monitors at a laundromat, an electronics store, and a florist in
Greenpoint,Brooklyn. The project is both a pragmatic solution to
exhibiting work and an attempt to disrupt the sophistication of
patrons and change their relationship to proprietors. The title
refers to the subject of the videos: groups of multicolored
filaments observed under the force of moving air / wind. Much of
the imagery appears computer generated, but was created with
household objects.

Strands can be understood as a past, present, and
future (0,1,2). The nature of the past and future as mental constructions
are reflected in the appearances of Strands 0 and 2. Here, the content
of the film has been mirrored and overlaid with incongruent sound,
allowing the viewer to use their Rorschach blot reading potential to
project ideas onto imagery. Strands 1, the present, documents a hand
shooting champagne poppers into a fan and uses sound synchronous to
its action.The Strands project seeks to illustrate a taxonomy of life and
time on a local as well as galactic scale. The reflective, backward looking
environment of the Laundromat, where one sees the past week laid out in
front of them, houses Strands 0 “the origin of the cycle” – a point from
which life itself started a journey of specialization and diversification.
Strands 1 is in the electronics store- a distinctly human point of view- a
fascination with violence and definitive events in the context of information
barrage. The florist is the anticipatory setting for Strands 2: the intention of
a heart surviving in an imagined future.

My own negotiation with shop owners and managers became part of the piece
as I began to answer their questions about what sort of exchange I was
proposing. While on display, my hope is that Strands will crystallize as a kind
of performance in which the videos, patrons, visitors, proprietors, and myself
will play a part.