Transit-Loom
2005
Like much of the work found here this description links both technical function and conceptual foundation in the same breath. Transit-Loom is designed as a large-scale public mural employing high-resolution projection with live camera images mapped inside a self-generating 3-D environment. The work is an amalgam of two earlier ideas, the loom and the mechanical clock. The archetypal geometric patterns are rich with both contemporary and historic associations, recalling cross-cultural motifs present in textile designs worldwide. In essence, the work employs the rhythmic repetition of alternating horizontal and vertical pixel generators. This technique is closely associated with textile arts such as beadwork or weaving, where the artisan works within a prescribed matrix of horizontal and vertical grids. In Transit-Loom the pixel generators are driven by a series of low frequency square-waves which function in synchronous timing to form a circular repetition of faster pulses nested within slower pulses. This clock-like mechanism drives both image and sound. Transit-Loom consists of 31 potential aesthetic states, which are randomly selected when the ambient sound level in the immediate environment reaches a specified volume. These key changes are often accompanied by markedly louder sonic gestures dictated, in part, by the “instrument”. The work is programmed to display a range of possible color palettes fed into the system via slow time delays independent of the larger oblique rectilinear shapes. This asynchronous approach results in unpredictable color associations producing moments of elegant restraint or unbridled gnashing of hue. An additional element integral to this version of the Transit-Loom is the multiple live instances of the viewer’s own image drifting across the implied infinity of the screen. The multiple iterations of video planes vary in number and density dependent on which one of the 31 aesthetic states is chosen at any given moment. Just as the clock mechanism triggers both geometric image and sound, it also systematically generates the repetition of video images. Transit-Loom is an automated system that visualizes both the immediate and infinite qualities of time.
