Ann E. Resnick

Okay, this is something I’m currently working on that I’d like to take in a new direction for an exhibit in NYC this year–it’s called “Dead Dogs”–currently it’s a wall installation made from plastic flowers that depicts all the dogs I’ve known, scale indicating how long they’ve been dead–(think of it as a memorial, but with more metaphorical overtones). Now, I’d like to see it with LED and sound–a wall-size LED display that would be programmed to depict these dogs at varying intervals,(maybe with some text also) and I think it would be cool if viewers could enter their own information about their own dead dogs and somewhere in the programming there would be images of other kinds of dogs, etc.. So, I just got off the phone with a local sign company who suggested that what I want might be 30-40,000 dollars–is there a way to do this economically? Like making a minature sign and enlarging it through projection–or something like that? And how do you think the sound element should work? I’ll be glad to hear your comments!

you walk into the gallery, there’s a device that reads your pulse (something you slip over your finger, right?), the pulse triggers a drumbeat or other percussive instrument (how about a xylophone?), the sound triggers a drawing machine that makes a tattoo-like drawing on the wall–and couldn’t each sensor have more than one option (so the first sound might be drums, but the second, third and fourth, etc. could all be different and the drawing machine could make different kinds of drawings in different spots on the same wall). Now, all this could be tied into personality readings or profiling of some kind–do we have to get permission from the NSA to use their spying techniques?

Here’s one small idea for a final project–motion sensors trigger ambient sound (just household sounds–in my case, barking dogs for one–but things like phones ringing, radio/tv sounds, foot fall, voices) as you traverse the exhibition space–randomly–causing minor dislocations for viewers–they might think for a moment that they’re not in a gallery space–just very briefly–then somewhere else in the space a film (I think super eight) that utilizes all those sounds in some straightforward narrative way–maybe the projection would be triggered by some other mechanism–hmmm–just thinking out loud. What do you think? Too cinematic?