1000 CRICKETS, DO NOT OPEN is a two channel live video feed installation in which wireless security cameras, monitors, mechanical insects and 1000 live crickets have been placed inside two clear vitrines for viewing. A viewer at one end sees what the security camera is trained on just around the corner, and vice versa. The contrasts here, between real physical space, and a representation thereof, highlight a tension between nearness and distance, biological life and technology, freedom and confinement. Our idea is to create a sense of ambiguity, or slippage, between virtual and real space here. When one looks down at the screen and sees the image of a bug both in the video feed as well as on top (literally) of the screen’s surface, one is reminded of the thinning barriers between types of space in our contemporary technological culture. Alternatively, when one sees the artificial backdrop of a manicured palatial garden presented in close combination with live plants, or realizes themselves in a box not so dissimilar from the one holding the crickets (being viewed themselves by other viewers), it forces one to question what kinds of new spaces are opening up with the advent of technology. - March 2008, Whitman College |