AKA v.2.0 Single channel video, 4.05 min. 2012
AKA was originally conceived as an installation piece. I created this single channel video version as my entrant in the inaugural Neighborhood Watch project in Toledo. NHW Projection Walks are pedestrian scale, artist produced, one-night-only ephemeral projection art exhibitions that began in Tampa, Florida. See below for more on the content of AKA.
AKA one gallon of lake water, elephant table, camera, projector, digital image on canvas, electronics
AKA is a live-feed video installation piece. A clear cylinder containing one gallon of lake water sits atop an elephant shaped table. A small motor and eccentric rock the table creating ripples on the surface of the water. A small white noise generator creates a gentle sound of waves. At the bottom of the lake water is an illuminated text that describes a first-hand account of a fishing trip to Spirit Lake, Alaska, also known to the locals as Elephant Lake. Spirit Lake is 3,980 miles from where I live in Toledo. Elephant Lake is 3,980 miles from Toledo. I am equidistant from Spirit and Elephant.
The text was inspired by a very matter-of-fact account of a rather uneventful fishing trip that I found on a mundane personal website. The only image posted from the trip, a ghostly eagle perched at great height.
Distance is largely what this piece is about. Distance from Spirit. Distance from Elephant, Distance from the eagle who watches Spirit or Elephant, for whom there is no difference. Spirit is more or less self explanatory. For me elephant has come to be a metaphor for the world- Massive. Impossible to ignore, Powerful and awkward in its there-ness, yet oddly passive and genial. Its slow and deliberate movements, not without a certain grace, reveal the workings of a completely indifferent and inscrutable will, quite capable, through caprice or inattention, of being our undoing.
AKA is a closed circuit video loop a sculpture that surveils itself. Its camera sees the surface, but AKA speaks from the depth. The projection erases the distance between surface and depth; renders it moot. The projection is surface/depth, speech/vision.
The elephant table that holds the lake water during initial tests of the text illuminator.
