Warware, Greg Marshall, 2017, video art installation, Truck Contemporary Art Gallery – Uhall space, Digital Artifacts Group Show – EMMedia 2017 Particle + Wave Media Art Festival, February 4 – March 4, 2017, Calgary, Alberta, Canada CGI animation, video projector, media player, zinc plated chains, 24” x 13.5” x 4” plexi museum case, aragonite sand, picture frame with magnifying glass and jeweller’s loop
BACKGROUND OF WORK: The art video installation presents data visualization from collected news stories from Google alerts on lethal US military drone attacks. Dating back to September, 2013, 20 news stories are transformed from words and are coded into hexidecimal format, translated into colour grids which are then aligned and extruded into 3 dimensional form. A continual video roll of the extruded grids slowly drifts by in one direction. There are no cuts in the looping video, it is one long perpendicular overhead camera move for 2 minutes or 3500 frames. It is based from a previous single-channel video artwork entitled Drone, 2016 which has been screened at several media art festivals in the US, along with a group exhibition for two weeks at Antimatter Media Art showcase in Victoria in 2016.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Utilizing minimal lighting in a somewhat dark space, this video art installation uses a video projector suspended 32 inches off the gallery floor via industrial chains criss-crossed which are attach at two points on the ceiling. The projector aims down towards a 24” x 13.5” x 4” museum-like clear plexiglass top case that sits atop a circular pile of white sand on the floor. A looped video animation extruded grid moves steadily across the uneven sand surface creating a mesmerizing, colourful and undulating moving image that visually dances upon the uneven surface of the sand. The image projected is intensified due to its short throw distance and creates a kind of aura-like presence on the surface of the sand, reflecting further off the interior walls of the plexiglass case with some residual reflection occurring on the ceiling depending on the height.