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'SEE CHANGE': Finding Truth in Trillions of Pixels

By Anne Bray
June 14, 2012
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In partnership with Freewaves, dedicated to the creative exhibition of the most innovative and culturally relevant independent new media art from around the world.

This weekend Freewaves, LAX, Jon 9, DCA, and 17 artists are launching "SEE CHANGE," 2 groundbreaking video installations featuring 27 original, site-specific artworks, located in the lower-level arrivals hall of the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, permanently accessible to the public.

"SEE CHANGE" includes 2 large-scale displays: a 58-screen, 90-foot linear video filmstrip suspended from the ceiling, and a 25-screen media wall. The installations provide four hours of original programming by the artists and their featured works.

People, SoCal objects, nature and places are the artists' subjects. Half of them are from L.A., and some of them refer specifically to the city, but all considered the airport, waiting, and international travelers as video elements. The videos range from meditative to chaotic, from heavily montaged to linearly documentary, and from digitally manipulated to hand drawn animations.

Artists, engineers, curators, administrators and a programmer negotiated over seven years to make this complex system come to life. Each artist took this colossal opportunity in a different direction; yet each explored the arena between space and time (3D to 4D), compressing or expanding "real time" of human eyes.

Trillions of pixels swim around the 80+ synchronized TV screens of video art at LAX. These many screens' significant advantage over one screen is their accent on differences: Contrasting images, side by side, beg for comparison, difference is their norm.

The modernists' decisive moment has been replaced by many moments often from different angles, like from different window seats in a plane. Are you looking from the point of view of travelers, greeters, airport managers or cleaners? The multiple monitors of related images ask viewers to compare and contrast frames unconsciously. How they differ hints at artists' intentions. Some present micro-changes between frames asking one to analyze subtle variations in nature, specific neighborhoods and distant cities. How similar are they? The meaning inhabits their differences, for example, are we careening around the world or spying on one patch of nature?

The results remind us that motion is the blend of time and space. Categories can be blurrier than we think. Chance might play a role. The frames' relationships show how far in time or space we have moved. Which place or time is right? Can they both or neither tell the truth? Can we separate them to see each independently? How many truths are there?

The artists:

Monika Bravo/BREATHING_WALL_LAX
Patty Chang and Noah Klersfeld/Current
Seoungho Cho/City of Light
Felipe Dulzaides/Taking Chances
Todd Gray and Joseph Santarromana/Intersect
Kurt Hentschläger/View
Louis Hock/Homeland
Hilja Keading/Splash
Ryan Lamb/Five-Dimensional Parade
Chip Lord/To & From LAX
Megan McLarney/Landscapes
Esther Mera and John Reed/Crossroads
Paul Rowley and David Phillips/Local Time
Steve Shoffner/Cloud 29
Pascual Sisto/Cumulous
Scott Snibbe/Transit
Caspar Stracke/Cities Out of Cities

The reception, on Saturday, June 16, from 5 to 8 p.m. is free and open to the public. Parking will be validated.

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