ERIENESS (2023)
Multi-Channel Projection (25:00 Synchronized Loop)

Created during a residency at FEED Media Art Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, ERIENESS, is a site-specific installation all about seeing the city of Erie as a non-specific landscape. It is presented as a multi-channel video projection of experimental moving images in the 2nd story windows of 1301 State Street of Erie, PA. The video imagery consists of shot 4K footage that was processed, edited, and screened in the span of 9 working days. The 4K recordings are scans of the city from a moving vehicle conducted in seperate sessesion and sections of Erie. The 4K video files were then played back and modified using real-time analog mixing, digital FX, and camera signal chaining using salvaged electronics available in FEED’s video synth lab.

The multimedia imagery of ERIENESS shows how a rust belt city such as Erie are static, unchanging landscapes that are seemingly unfrozen in time through the usage of camera panning and analog-to-digital effects. The time of the landscape is manipulated with historicized video resolutions and textures. ERIENESS is also part of larger a project inspired by the viewing the harshness of urban skylines and infrastructure from the vantage point of mobile windows: Car windows that frame motion like film and TV screens. The window of a video camera LCD pointed at the screen of TV monitor. The modular recording projected to a white screen, further framed by the glass windows of a building. This post-modern view of the world is a constant distancing of the realities of post-industrial centers. By seeing how screens and digital technologies reify the present reality of American cities, ERIENESS is an image for the citizens of the city to detect local qualities. How the past achievements and future hopes and concerns of Erie are displayed in a distorted way. To be able to identify what makes Erie, Erie and what about it is like so many other places is the task of every viewer.