Participatory multimedia installation with video projection, slides, surround sound and motion detectors.  8’ x 8’ x 20’. 2000

Urban Corridor was developed as part of our ongoing investigation into the role of the artist in relationship to urbanism, globalization, and media coverage. This video-installation explores the power of the individual to influence the media and the city through art. Urban Corridor comes alive when the visitors enter the installation. The recreation of an urban space inside the museum and gallery setting affects the audience's perception of the piece. Each visitor has a unique experience inside the corridor.

In the information and globalization era, with the development of technologies of mass diffusion, the media has become an instrument of power and control. The media is concentrated in the urban environment and could not exist outside of this physical space. The space of the urban corridor mirrors this urban space and enables us to critique the universal centers of creation and diffusion of art and information. To us, as Latin Americans, this subverting potential is essential to negotiate among diverging realities. A corridor, "a long, narrow, densely populated area" serves as a visual metaphor for the city's synekism. Our corridor is populated by sounds and images replicating the cacophony of news and in-formation within the urban environment. In it, people, news, and art, travel and interact along place and time variables.

There are infinite cross-points in the city. We will focus on the power of the media to shape the perception of reality and effectively impact the course of events. The media is a multinational corporation concentrated in a few metropolitan points. The individual can still exert power over the media and the city because of the co-dependent nature of the relationship that ties these three. Art becomes the tool of the individual to transform this interaction. The audience is an essential part of this installation since it is the body that activates the space.

Project Description

This installation is a collage of a video projection with sound compositions. The sounds elicit images of the urban environment. There is a soundtrack for the video and several sets of independent sounds that are triggered by the visitors. These sounds are connected to a computer with two CD-Roms that are randomly activated. There is another set of environmental sounds coming from a CD player that constantly play.

The video interweaves four "news" events: an automobile accident, a public demonstration, urban sprawl, and a war. These events are designed to encompass the audience perception from a global (i.e. a war) to an individual experience (i.e. car wreck). The news exposes the process by which real occurrences become a mediated reality. The video utilizes a combination of found, original footage and voice-overs.

We create a virtual cityscape with a large video projection and surround sound which envelope the viewer. This is an interactive piece. As the participant enters the room, he/she triggers the video projection and audio sound. As the participant walks around the room, he/she turns on various motion detectors which trigger random sounds.

The projector is placed two feet from the ground, 15 feet away from the projection wall. This strategic placement allows the visitor to literally be in the screen

Exhibitions

CU Art Museum (former Sibel-Wolle Gallery), University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 2000, as part of Electronic Easel, curated by Simon Zalkind

VIII Brazilian Symposium of Computer Music, Fortaleza, Brazil, 2001

Rhizome.org, since 2004

Publications

Urban Corridor: accumulation and interaction as form-bearing processes. Keller, D. and A. Capasso and S. R. Wilson. Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2002), Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2002, University of Michigan Library.

Reviews

2000 Circuit of Life: Art and technology come together in Electronic Easel. Sunday Camera. June 4

Cyber Side Effects: ‘Electronic Easel’ assesses the impact. The Denver Post. July 20

Vanity Fair. Westword. June 8 to 14

Graduate students explore profound, mundane. J. Gluckstern. The Daily Camera. November 24

Funding

CU Art Museum