Black Boxes and Dark Rooms, Solo Show at Beefhaus
2016
Black Boxes and Dark Rooms builds on the Hermeneutics Cycle, and carries forward my interest in textual interpretation. The dark room is presented as the social interiority of the cinema, as the gulf of time that makes the interpretation of texts problematic, as the unknown algorithms of the technological “black box”, as the ritual space of magic, and as the anxiety of engaging with finitude.
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Included Works
Hermeneutic Circle - color slides, modified projector, closed-circuit video, custom software
Epistle to Jenny - 16mm projection, morse code, microcontroller, custom software, live YouTube webcast
To Jenny:
We gather in the darkness to see the magic of new machines.
We draw a circle on the ground to wall out old worlds we can’t control.
We press our tongues against our teeth to rebuild old words.
We pray our letters are read and we are remade in the image of the reader.
We survive as shadows floating in bones.
I’ve lost track of which one of us I am.
Negative Theology - photo enlarger, developing chemicals, silver gelatin print, safe light
Magic Circle - 5 televisions, coax and a/v cables, black video
Sitting Alone in the Dark - digital video
Fourth Hermeneutic - microcontroller, custom software
