[-empyre-] Introduction -James

["James Way" <jarway@hotmail.com>]

Thank you Renate and Tim for the invitation to participate and thanks to the 
fellow participants this month.

I think Renate hit the nail on the head with her first sentence declaring an 
"interest in hypothetical  boundaries or the space between interior/ 
exterior, psychic/social, and private/public has created interesting 
confusions in working with the immaterial of new media."

Much of this dwelling on the border or the space between states infers a 
displacement and a shifting of the dialectical terms and the viewer. Other 
ideas that come to mind when I consider our installation/media works are 
embodiment/displacement, biological/mechanical, singular/collaborative. The 
installation puts the viewer, and ourselves, in another space, narrative, 
practice - hopefully a more inquisitive space, often confusing.

This is the approach that I use as well as that of +parasite, although our 
materials and metaphors may differ. As architects (nearly all of +parasite's 
collaborators are architects or architecturally trained) we look for uses 
and histories of places (usually derelict, converted, marginal, or hidden) 
to inform our conceptual approach. We also examine physical attributes of a 
space to inform how the physical intervention occurs. These qualities 
combined with our own interest in technology (especially low-tech), the 
body(architectural and biological), and media (activation, represenstation 
and documentation) inform our practice(s).

Our interest in the parasite, heavily informed by Michel Serres, cuts across 
many of these considerations - how the installations physically attach to 
the place, how they occupy and relate to the space, and ultimately how they 
activate the space (a methodological approach rather than solely a  
biological metaphor, the recent work is more historical and geological.) Our 
goal is to disrupt passive use or awareness into one that is active - where 
a passerby becomes aware of some aspect of the space previously unnoticed or 
unconsidered. Many of our installations have sound or kinetic aspects - 
light sensitive metronomes and motion sensor-activated motors - and 
performance events with sound and video projections to activate the 
installation ans facilitate viewers' engagement with the work and to add an 
interactive layer. It's also a way for us to test possibilities that might 
occur in future installations.

Also, I think that our collaborative aspect brings a critical approach 
because not only are we making an installation but we are engaging each 
other along the way from discussing conceptual ideas to developing practical 
matters of construction. And collaboration brings diverse interests, skills 
and approaches together, plus making something with a group is just plain 
fun.

My recent interest has been in examining how to display and document 
installation/performances and their sites and how to fold this back into the 
installations.

To help kick off the conversation, how do others engage in the collaborative 
practice or the (im)materiality of their media?

James
www.section-mw.com

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