Anat Pollack Convergent Media Artist installation.... interactive real-time audio and video processing.... physical computing.... video.... audio....

[ Artist Statement | CV | Teaching Philosophy | Shi.ko Ltd., 2003 | Echo & Narcissus| Desiderata | Photography | Sculptural Installations | Links | Classes ]



 
Lights on Tampa 2009 in Collaboration with Mark Koven
2009
This project for Lights on Tampa 2009 involves use of Vertical Wind Power Generators installed with an array of spotlights pointed back onto its self. The visual or aesthetic effect would be of revolving polished metal multi bladed flame shapes installed on top of built raised structures ringed by spotlights. The lights installed around each turbine would cause light to be reflected off the turbine blades in a type of Giant Disco Ball light show lighting the surrounding buildings and area of Tampa. This effect would be dramatic at night, also encompassing a shimmering light effect during daylight hours.

Breathe
 
Foolish Beasts: Animals Look Back In Collaboration with Dr. Paula Lee
2008
This collaboartion between Anat Pollack and Dr. Paula Lee is an installation using video cameras and zoomorphic robots. This work is meant to offer a critical examination of anthropocentric assumptions that situate animals as the "always-observed" subject.

Foolish Beasts
 
Peek-A-Boo
2006
While a smile shows our canines, insinuating a sinister emotion, so too can a laugh possess a disturbing and menacing quality. In Peek-A-Boo, a simple and fun activity is dissected through repetition. Within the work, the complication of our contemporary life is reflected in the duplicity and layering of this single one game of Peek-A-Boo. Where a single clip would show a pure unabashed laughter sparked by the simplicity of peek-a-boo, once layered and complicated, the repetition takes on a manic and perhaps even sinister feel. As viewers, we know it to be playful yet feel their disturbing effects, due to this amplification of a childıs manic behavior.

 
Breathe
2004
I am continuously working to bridge the gap between the body and the mind. In Breathe, I utilize simple technologies to draw air in and push air out of a rubber bellows. The sound of the air being inhaled and exhaled is meant to offer both an internal and external experience for the viewer. The cycling of the sound is reminiscent of the breath, the sound itself reminiscent of the ocean. In this art piece, a pure machine simulates an interior human experience, forming a recursive relationship with the viewer as they experience their own internal rhythm.

 
SuperBowl: 2004, 2006, 2007
2004-Present
This is a 4 wall projection installation. Four years of Superbowl games have been recorded, deconstructed and reconstructed. Although 4 years are represented, there is much similarity in the 4 projections. This work is meant to call attention to our habitual modes of perceiving information and the frenetic nature of mass media. In this work, I have compressed the footage of the 2004 Superbowl down to 7 minutes. The heavily layered aural and visual information loses its original meaning, becoming random noise, and causes our brains to seek out patterns in the chaos. As the media itself loses its original meaning, it creates an opening in the way that familiar information is experienced.

 
Shi.ko Ltd., 2003, Shi.ko Ltd. 2007 V.2
2003, 2007
"Shi.ko Ltd., 2003" is an exploration of human-computer interaction using an audio interface. The audience participants are invited to enter a small human-sized container alone- in order to teach the "beings" within how to speak. Upon entering the space, the participant notices the 5 small constructed "beings" withwhom they now share the space. Each one of these beings, the Shi.ko's, has an (LED) heartbeat and fiber optic sprouts of hair. Each of the 5 Shi.kos has a distinct voice and mode of interpreting data. In the first interactions, the "beings" act like obedient children, mimicking what the participant has said. Over time, the interaction becomes more complex as the "Shi.ko's" learn and begin to retain what they have learned. The more that they learn, the ruder they become to the participant. In the end, they are conducting a rapid fire dialogue using/exploiting everything you have said plus what every other person who has been in the space has said. The participant is no longer useful. In "Shi.ko Ltd.," I am interested in the idea of interface -- what lies behind that which is visible, by what is masked by that interface, and the gap in the interface between human and machine. Computer interface masks the underlying technology and structure -- the means and the end for those developing the software. I am interested in our expectations when faced with certain codified signs, and the way that changing their meaning has the power to disrupt conditioned responses.

 
Television Commercial Series
2004-Present
In my TV Commercial Series, I have digitally processed images from television ads as a means of re/appropriating the imagery used by advertisers to sell us material goods. Too often, the imagery and sounds used in commercials have no reference point to the item being sold, but rather are used to target our innermost Desire, an effective advertising technique. This series of work is meant to refine and distill the imagery from these ads. Re/appropriating these images are a way for me to give these spaces back to the view, this offering a space for an experience with the Sublime.

 
Echo & Narcissus
With Adam Goode 2003
"Echo and Narcissus" is a real-time video installation. Within the installation exists a single piece of glass that acts as a mirror. Images projected on to the glass are revealed when the participant stands at a certain angle from the glass. As a mirror, the participants sees a reflection of themselves as well as a layering of images of others who have inhabited the space previously. Over time, their own image appears in the projection, mixed and morphed with the images of others who have been captured on video. The time delay is deliberate as I am trying to create a juncture in the experience of gazing at oneself in real-time, seeing others gazing into the mirror, seeing oneself in the past, and experiencing oneself in the present with the new knowledge of being recorded. This piece, like Desiderata was an exploration of cognition, a step toward simulating the experience of memory using an algorithmic process. In this piece, I am interested in the ghosts of the past. The way that a space can simultaneously feel empty, and full of all of the life that has inhabited it over time. I am also interested in the juncture between the subject and the object, and our desire to see ourselves. Watching this piece then becomes about watching oneself. Echo & Narcissus
 
Desiderata
2002-2003
"Desiderata" was an attempt to represent the effects of trauma on memory. Using an algorithm to process video, I was attempting to simulate my experience of time as it relates to memory, and the way that we live our lives through the filters of our combined memories. Time as a unit of measurement is sequential, horizontal, one moment following the last. While this is useful for science and language, the "duration" of an experience is generally determined by the intensity of the experience, not by the amount of time which has passed. In trauma, this becomes accentuated: a single moment in time seems to stretch and reverberate ad infinitum, while the actual time passing while performing a mundane task, such as a drive to the store, can seem to disappear entirely from memory, thereby collapsing time. My goal for this project was to simulate the blurring of noise and crystallization of moments that we experience through memories. Just as our memories are stacked vertically within us yet continue to stack up over time, the video is composited vertically while continuing to run sequentially. As the video plays, images disintegrate while others (re)emerge. The effects are long moments of blur, and distinct moments that seem frozen in time.
 
 
Television Commercial Series
2004
 
 


 
Sculptural Installations
1997-2001
 
 

Audio
1997
 
 

Composed Algorithmically Using CSound and Common LISP Music



[ Artist Statement | CV | Teaching Philosophy | Shi.ko Ltd., 2003 | Echo & Narcissus| Desiderata | Photography | Sculptural Installations | Links | Classes ]

Copyright 2004 by Anat Pollack

anat pollack at hotmail dot com