TRACES & GHOSTLINESS
James Oliver Senior
2008

Single channel multimedia installation with wires, electrical tape, aluminum sheeting, landscape fabric, DVD projector, headphones, color, sound. 84 x 84 x144 inches.

Twelve wire tubes hang in a circle from the ceiling. Each tube is wrapped in black landscape fabric and aluminum mesh, and through the middle is hung a lamp-wire with a green bulb. Descending from the middle of the ceiling and extending down is a flexible wire armature of a tree root system, suggesting the grasping activity of organic life. A sequence of MRI sections of my brain is projected through the middle, colored according to thermal activity. These images represent how perception is key to locating myself within nature. Using perception as a subject, my intention was to create a space which represents the insubstantiality of a virtual environs. The user is immersed in a *ghostly* version of nature. I made 3 prototypes in studio from the sketched form, experimenting with 1/8” plastic tubing and water pumps, different illumination and fabrics.

Traces and Ghostliness installed at the Chelsea Art Museum, NY, May 2008.

SIMFLUENCE
James Oliver Senior and Bryan Cole
2007

Double channel multimedia installation with wire, turnbuckles, translucent scrim fabric, projectors, mac minis, extension poles, color, silent. 96 x 72 x 240 inches.

Two image sequences – a video game character daydreaming, and her thoughts of jellyfish and sunsets – are simultaneously projected on both sides of a series of 4 translucent scrim panels. The taut panels are suspended from steel wire strung between columns. The projectors and computers are mounted in plain view 10ft back on either side. The human-scale character appears to float three-dimensionally in the space. Her anthropomorphic actions belie her nature as a construction of computer-algorithm and colored-light. Our intention was to show how the video-gamer, like the reader, empathizes with video-game characters. Over-identification can lead to a confluence of the actual and the virtual.

Simfluence installed at the Chelsea Art Museum, NY. April 2007.