Ray Sweeten & Lisa Gwilliam
THRESHOLDS
October 19 – December 1, 2014
Opening Saturday October 19, 6-9pm

From “the _______ of strings and objects”, 2013, browser-based moving image installation, 25-minute sequence © Ray Sweeten & Lisa Gwilliam

Microscope Gallery is very pleased to present Thresholds, the second solo exhibition of works by the artistic pair Ray Sweeten and Lisa Gwilliam, also known as DataSpaceTime. The artists – whose collaborations to date have centered around works utilizing the QR code – continue their exploration of the culture of informatics and the thresholds of visual perception and recognition with new browser-based installation works disrupting the aesthetic and processes of video and animated gifs.

Both works in Thresholds utilize original videos recorded by the artists that have been deconstructed into as many as 25,000 animated gifs and then reassembled across a grid of phasing pivot points to create moving image works that play in localized browser windows (not through video playback devices).

In “the _____ of strings and objects”, images from the original video – escalator stairs, subway tunnels, burning sparklers, city traffic and other scenes – play, slightly offset, on each of two 60 inch LED screens. Subtle changes in light, motion, and content between and within the grids challenge the viewer’s ability to recognize the familiar in this 25-minute looping work. A third browser, on a smaller screen, offers a real time report of the activities of the main screens – which are able to interact with each other through a web socket (a virtual open “door”) – including the rotations of the gifs, the state of the browsers, and other raw event-based messages.

In the second installation, “if (an index) is occupied”, a 10-minute, single monitor work based on the same technology as the first piece, the artists take the element of self-reflection further, featuring the language and structures of software as both content and subject matter. The imagery – often seen as viewed through a magnifying lens – contains among others the actual code of the first written computer program (by Ada Lovelace) as well as the artists code used to generate the work itself. What is seen, although generated by a language is no longer that language, but an aestheticized by-product of its execution.

Thresholds by Ray Sweeten & Lisa Gwilliam (aka DataSpaceTime) opens at Microscope Gallery on Saturday, October 19 from 6 to 9pm, and runs through December 1, 2013. Gallery Hours: Thurs to Mon 1-6PM, or by appointment.

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Sound and visual artist RAY SWEETEN and artist and set designer LISA GWILLIAM debuted as the collaborative duo DataSpaceTime in November 2011 at Microscope Gallery with the exhibition “the optimal value for y”. Their work most recently exhibited this month at Dialogic, a group show at Rowan University Art Gallery in New Jersey. Their work has also been shown at Whitdel Arts, Detroit, Michigan; Festival A-part, Provence, France; Cyber Arts Gallery, Jamaica Plain, MA among others. Sweeten & Gwilliam’s collaborative work has also been featured in Hyperallergic, Blouin ArtInfo, Artspace, Cool Hunting, and other publications.

From “the _______ of strings and objects”, 2013, browser-based moving image installation, 25 minute sequence
© Ray Sweeten & Lisa Gwilliam (DataSpaceTime)