|
Jim Campbell
Experiments in Touching Color, 1998-1999
custom electronics, video camera, video projector, DVD player
dimensions variable
courtesy of the artist and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, California
Jim Campbell reveals the artistic and poetic potential of electronic technology in his multimedia works. The results are often lyrical meditations on the nature of reality -- both psychological and physical -- that stimulate the senses. Linking sound and color, which trigger memories and associations, Campbell addresses our fleeting and ever-changing perceptions of the world by inviting us to experience, reflect upon and respond to a variety of images.
In Experiments in Touching Color, partially funded by a Fellowship Award from the Rockefeller Foundation, the viewer activates a rear-projection video screen mounted on top of a pedestal in a darkened space. Prerecorded video vignettes are transformed from image to pure color by the placement of fingers on the screen. When a woman's face appears, for instance, touching her lips turns the screen into a saturated shade of red. Touch also generates a sound related to the image -- the woman utters the French names for colors.
As an electronic artist with degrees in math and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Campbell has brought a new and more complex dimension to the video medium. His artistic process is literally set into motion by the viewer, who becomes a participant in establishing the work's form and meaning. With Experiments in Touching Color, we are able to explore Campbell's unique expression of the interaction between seeing and perception, form and content, science and art.
http://www.jimcampbell.tv
Heather Sealy Lineberry, Jim Campbell: Transforming Time, Electronic Works 1990-1999 (Tempe: Arizona State University Art Museum, 1999).
|
