Airlock Park at N-gon.com

Just as a sequence of images is set in motion inside a man as his life comes to an end — unfolding the views of himself under which he has encountered himself without being aware of it — suddenly in his expressions and looks the unforgettable emerges and imparts to everything that concerned him that authority which even the poorest wretch in dying possess for the living around him.

Airlock Park is an ongoing project, and is currently comprised of three interconnected scenes. These scenes are of incorporeal ruins, built upon media fragments and ghost topographies. Each is an archive of aftermath and an encapsulation of one-way communication, containing layers of histories and myths, partially reconstructed and incompletely imagined: "Mockingbird Hill" occupies a border zone riddled with Spanish bombs and lit by Guernican lamps; "Rebel Yell" tracks insurgents as they attempt to divine portents in the sky and earth; "Mentioned in Dispatches" extrapolates the heart of Bas Jan Ader during his last voyage, In Search of the Miraculous. Each scene is driven by a particular state of reflectiveness, a moment of untethering, in which, simultaneously, the artifacts of a culture compress into the same space as the expanding perceptions of a nascent or waning subject. [1]

The scenes of Airlock Park run continuously and may be "flown" by the viewer. Sample images and video from the first three scenes, "Mockingbird Hill", "Rebel Yell", and "Mentioned in Dispatches", are below. Forthcoming in 2010 are three more scenes: "The Lightfall Steppes", "Adjuster's Widow", and "Sent Bird".

Installation notes: The work is viewed on a wide HDTV screen, which is connected to a PlayStation 3, previously prepared with custom software. Alternatively, the work may be projected.

Navigating the space is done using the handheld controller, but there is also an autopilot mode in which the scenes are guided by machine. The scenes are interconnected, allowing travel from one to the next.


Just as a sequence of images is set in motion inside a man as his life comes to an end — unfolding the views of himself under which he has encountered himself without being aware of it — suddenly in his expressions and looks the unforgettable emerges and imparts to everything that concerned him that authority which even the poorest wretch in dying possess for the living around him. — Walter Benjamin Airlock Park is an ongoing project, and is currently comprised of three interconnected scenes. These scenes are of incorporeal ruins, built upon media fragments and ghost topographies. Each is an archive of aftermath and an encapsulation of one-way communication, containing layers of histories and myths, partially reconstructed and incompletely imagined: "Mockingbird Hill" occupies a border zone riddled with Spanish bombs and lit by Guernican lamps; "Rebel Yell" tracks insurgents as they attempt to divine portents in the sky and earth; "Mentioned in Dispatches" extrapolates the heart of Bas Jan Ader during his last voyage, In Search of the Miraculous. Each scene is driven by a particular state of reflectiveness, a moment of untethering, in which, simultaneously, the artifacts of a culture compress into the same space as the expanding perceptions of a nascent or waning subject. [1] The scenes of Airlock Park run continuously and may be "flown" by the viewer. Sample images and video from the first three scenes, "Mockingbird Hill", "Rebel Yell", and "Mentioned in Dispatches", are below. Forthcoming in 2010 are three more scenes: "The Lightfall Steppes", "Adjuster's Widow", and "Sent Bird". Installation notes: The work is viewed on a wide HDTV screen, which is connected to a PlayStation 3, previously prepared with custom software. Alternatively, the work may be projected. Navigating the space is done using the handheld controller, but there is also an autopilot mode in which the scenes are guided by machine. The scenes are interconnected, allowing travel from one to the next. Speakers are required as the work does have an ambient sound. The installation environment must be dim.	Main + Links + Road + Artist +
Still images Sample recorded video: The videos are of sample flights on autopilot. I've silenced the audio in the videos since the sound of the work is ambient and quiet, and I've found that it plays badly on laptop speakers. The actual installed work runs continuously and may be guided by the viewer.
[1] The word "airlock" in the title, beyond its basic meaning as the chamber of departure between an explorer and vessel, is imagined to include its durational and associative aspects: as a shedding of the familiar for the wild or unknown; as an isolated procession between tether and release; as a site of individuation as well as enfoldment. It is a space of compression and decompression, not only of atmospheres, but also of perceptions and reflections. It is this expanded notion of the airlock which underlies the choices of imagery, which include: dream images lingering into wakefulness, the anxieties of the insomniac, the reveries of the dying. [up]