Smog Stacking, Jaus Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, USA, 2012

This process-driven work was triggered by a fascination with the scene in the movie ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ starring David Bowie, in which Bowie is fixated on an array of 12 TV screens that are transmitting all manner of human related exploits. As he watches, his reaction changes gradually from pleasure and enjoyment to a troubled and tortured demeanor.

In a world in which we are exposed to an overload of media, I wanted to experiment with the unconscious processes that happen under such conditions. Linking a hacked roomba (domestic vacuum cleaner robot) to my heart rate, the machine drew and painted traces across the tyvek surface as I watched video after video on YouTube, under the search term ‘smog’. The robot is programmed to behave in a more agitated way as my heart rate and stress levels rise, and wander more smoothly around the surface as my heart rate falls back to normal.

The ‘Stacking’ part of the title refers to a process in Neuro Linguistic Programming or hypnosis in which an idea is embedded in the mind through a repeated process at a heightened moment of awareness.

This type of mapping relates to research in the medical field such as in the paper: Mapping geometry in heart rate data: preliminary analysis [Danciger, Morton, Costa, Goldberger, Carlsson 2010] which proposes relationships between heartrate and data driven forms and geometries. This Smog Stacking project also corresponds to my Sensory Familiar project that traces the interspecies relationship between myself and animals, and is being presented next month in Germany.

exhibited at Jaus, Los Angeles

The Global Climacteric curated by Koan Jeff Baysa, M.D.

It is said that he who controls the weather, controls the world.

The Global Climacteric is a group show lampooning the politics and foibles of geomanipulation. In spite of the overall satiric tone, the works in this exhibition have been manifested through a process of rigorous investigation and data accumulation. The exhibition's script replaces nuclear threat with climate change. Ecopolitics and geoannihilation sub in for The Cold War when world leaders convened discussing solutions to correct past human mistakes while simultaneously posturing to take drastic measures to ensure a desired, albeit apocalyptic, future. The New Military Industrial Complex, for ecogeopoliticomanipulation, catalyzes warfare between opposing governments as well as with nature itself by instigating unnatural earthquakes, storms, and other ecodisasters.

Marcos Lutyens Aaron Sheppard Klaus Schafler

performance link

thanks to Richard Whitney

Using Format