The interstitial fragment processor is a kind of augmented landscape in which you discover
or rediscover the negative spaces that are constantly formed in and around between your
body and between yourself and other people.
It suddenly obtains a kind of physical form and makes a sound when you release it and
it falls down and bounces on the ground and bounces around and becomes kind of quasi-physical.
I like this notion of these fragments of something that have broken.
Some of these pieces are, it's a little bit of a gag, but this idea of the manual input
workstation, the interstitial fragment processor, that these are machines that are acting in
feedback with people, these are human machine systems whose technical descriptions just
basically give the most coarse description of the kind of locus of feedback.
So negative space is a concept that I learned from my mother when I was small.
My mom's an abstract expressionist painter, and when I was young and learning art and
learning to paint, she made me aware of negative space, which at first was an incredibly difficult
concept.
I remember her telling me about negative space when I was like six and not really understanding
what the hell she was talking about, but gradually becoming sensitive to it.
Her way of teaching, and she's an educator as well, her way of teaching me to draw was
to not draw the thing, but to draw the space between the things.
And after thinking about it like that, I kind of just became enured to this notion of negative
space as really this important substance.
So the interstitial fragment processor is sort of a small homage to her and that bit
of my art education.
I think one thing that's kind of funny about it, and this is sort of this radically interactive
thing I mentioned, obviously if you just come up to it, it doesn't do anything.
And even worse, it doesn't do anything until you make a negative shape, so a lot of people
come up to it.
And at this point, they're used to sort of this kind of media art posture I've called
it.
The media art posture sort of cacti-sing, someone else called it, is like, you go like
this, you sort of wave your hands and kind of hope for something that happens.
And if you just do that with the interstitial fragment processor, nothing happens.
You raise your arms, literally nothing happens.
It's not until the accident of making a negative shape or a little hole or something like that
that suddenly it comes to life.
So it's actually some people walk up to it, they go like that and nothing happens.
And I'm kind of okay with that.
I think it's okay to have an artwork that demands a little bit of investment and reveals
itself to somebody who explores it.
Kids figure it out instantly as they do, and again, I'm fine with that.
Thank you.
Okay, so I'm just about done here on the other side, um, this needs to go a little nearer.
The sounds that are happening are sounds of things breaking and falling, which for me is mostly a joke just because they're completely virtual objects.
The project involves a little bit of optical magic that's maybe worth pointing out.
There's an ultra-short video projector here which is projecting the video image, the virtual image, in front of me.
Meanwhile, back there is a sort of bluish theater light which is causing my analog shadow.
