Faces Like Ours
Mixed Media
STATEMENT
I have a long history of collaborating with artists and non-artists to make my
artwork. I enjoy the process and look forward to the ideas or skills that
others bring to the initial concept.
I had photographed some 200 faces of the action figures that I owned, and
used in all the work on this site. Along with utilizing the close up faces in
my Taxonomy series, I thought they would make a fascinating movie of
faces appearing and disappearing to the beat of music. I had a student, Tim Rosdahl, who cleverly designed an Adobe Flash program-based film that randomly extracted images from a large pool of still images. One never
knew what image would sit next to the other in this multiscreen installation.
And I have a friend, Joe Kramer, who is an excellent musician and
composer, who was experimenting with electronica.
I explained to Tim and Joe what I wanted to accomplish and working
together they created something that was better than my embryonic idea.
The original piece was viewed on a vertical computer screen with external
speakers. It never repeated the sequence of faces, and ran that way until the computer was shut off. We also made a DVD of it which works well,
thought it does repeat the sequences after a while. This is the first time it has
appeared since it was first exhibited. I hope you enjoy it.
Flash programming by Tim Rosdahl
Music composed and performed by Joe Kramer
Photographs by Larry Lytle