Patrice Coulombe
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Reflecting Pool (2008)
An installation by Brad Todd
Implemented by Patrice Coulombe
An antique metal toy house sits immersed in water inside a large and shallow plexiglass tray. Inside the house is a water pump which responds to a network of eight wireless sensor units distributed throughout the exhibiting venues entire building. These discrete yet sentient nodes monitor the minute changes in humidity of a given building’s interior. These fluctuations are sent to the host computer which then signals the pump to activate, flooding the surface of the model house with water and then settling again. The tin house slowly begins to rust due to this constant immersion in water. In this manner the small house embodies the larger architectures hidden somatic nature in a recursive loop of representation. There is also an accompanying soundscape which is directly related to the currents of incoming data. A database of audio samples recorded by members of Montreal band A silver Mt. Zion (Ian Ilavsky, Becky Foon and Eric Craven - (the audio in the clip is not their work - it is purely demo material) comes to life in an ever evolving 4 channel sonic environment.
Photos: Brad Todd and Patrice Coulombe (2008)
In both reference and homage, the project speaks to works such as Hans Hacke’s work Condensation Cube (1963-65) and the final shot iin the Andrei Tarkovsky film Nostalgia, where a model of the fimmakers childhood home appears nestled amidst and dwarfed by, the ruins of an ancient Italian church...
materials: antique metal dollhouse, plxiglass tray, eight custom sensor units (zigbee wireless mesh tranmitters, humidity sensors, pcb's), zigbee wireless receiver, cyberpak midi controller, water pump, custom software, audio card, mixing board, 4 speakers, macbook.
Biography
Brad Todd is an artist whose works span a variety of fields, including aspects of ubiquitous/responsive computing, and the physical artifacts and traces which emerge from these processes. Having received an M.F.A. from Concordia University (Montréal) in 1993, he starting playing music in the post-punk band Sofa, which released an album and single on the critically acclaimed Constellation Records Label. He was also a co-founder of Mobilegaze, an arts collective focussed on new media, which presented thematic curatorial exhibitions and events. Music and related audio experimentation have continued to appear as important influences in his works, and in past projects, he has also utilized telematics and reactive/augmented objects and spaces to evoke questions of memory, time and the influence of technology on individual and social psyches. Brad has received numerous grants and awards and has exhibited his works in galleries and media festivals in North America, South America, Asia and Europe, including the 3rd Beijing International New Media Art Exhibition and Symposium in Beijing, China, artBots at Eyebeam, N.Y., Inside at the Paços das artes, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Emplacement/Déplacement at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, N.Y. and ISEA in Nagoya, Japan and Belfast, Ireland. Presently he is an instructor in the Design and Computation Arts program at Concordia University in Montréal.
