Jennifer McCoy, Kevin McCoy: Small Appliances
Artist(s):
Title:
- Small Appliances
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 1997
Medium:
- Interactive digital video installation
Size:
- 120" x 240"
Category:
Artist Statement:
Small Appliances is a two-channel interactive digital video project that employs issues of domesticity to probe women’s use and control of technology. The narrative consists of 10 short stories told by 10 different women.
Viewers control the narrative flow of the video stories, visually moving from subjective to objective points of view by interacting with a kitchen sink filled with animated bubbles. Sculpturally, viewers look out from the vantage point of a 1940’s environment to witness the present complex commingling of subjective experience with technological processes.
Formally, this narrative material is delivered in three different forms: as an interactive video installation, as a stand-alone CD-ROM, and as an Internet project. In each case, the viewer moves through a graphical representation of the domestic environment, with the chosen path determining a specific thread for organizing the narrative and visual segments.
Technically, the gallery installation runs from a single Power Mac 8500 equipped with 8 gigabytes of hard-drive storage. All the video material is digital, which provides maximum flexibility to scale the video data and simultaneously present the work through a variety of channels: gallery, CD-ROM, or Internet.
