KEVIN MERCER \\
I create post-disciplinary installations through digital and handmade processes which illustrate loss, longing, and the need for communication. Within this narrative, pseudoscientific technology strains to establish a tenuous, though critical link to the ephemeral. I implement anachronistic equipment, such as black and white cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors or slide projectors, as a means to deliver digital animations and 3D scans of physical objects. Perceptions of the past and present osculate, as do the tangents of physical and digital realties.
Installations develop organically and flexibly as they evolve into autopoietic visualizations of otherwise unseen systems. Invisible telemetries and the transference of moving images are made material in the decidedly disorganized array of cables and wires. The resulting aesthetic is homemade, DIY, or make-do. Ultimately, each system is self-organized and self-critical. Zip ties, hardware, and audio-visual cables provide record of decision-making, but also elucidate the cybernetics of space and communication through immersive spectacle.
Arduino-controlled sensors facilitate reciprocal engagement. As an individual navigates the installation, their presence is perceived by the work itself as an input signal, to which it responds with an output signal in the form of light, sound, or projection. This closes, for a time, a homeostatic feedback loop. Once the viewer leaves, the communication is severed and the work reverts to soliloquy. A human participant is necessary in order for the artwork to function. Without identifying a target with which to communicate, the installation exists as a broken circuit, its human connection having disintegrated.