Chris Coleman

Along with being able to have breakfast with Patrick Kelly, I was able to both attend Chris Coleman's lecture, and have breakfast with him, just in reverse order.

Chris's lecture focused around a couple of his completed pieces, and also around a few pieces he is currently working on. While Patrick's word was based heavily around photography, Chris's work was based more around sculpture and video, often a combination of both. The first piece he showed us involved both a video display, and also the sculpture that created the video. As you entered the display, a video camera recorded you, and fed the image to a computer which, depending on your physique and the color of your clothing, determined a pattern that was fed to the sculpture. the sculpture was a large table set with ~144 computer fans, which were covered with a billowy cover. as the air blew up, it created landscapes with the covering, that were fed via a live feed to the TV monitor set in the outer hall where you entered. the pattern that the computer made triggered a sequence of on and off for the computer fans, so as you watched the TV monitor, the "landscape" that was being made was a direct reaction to you. viewers could then go around behind the wall that the TV was in, and witness the sculpture itself. this is a true installation piece: it reacts to the viewers and it engages the viewers.

Chris's work, for the most part, is a commentary on our current socioeconomic situation in this country. i felt that this theme became a little old after awhile. i am not sure how to explain it. Patrick's work dealt heavily with nature, but more from a "i am in nature creating media" point of view, than Chris's "this is what we are doing to ourselves" point of view. i definitely agree things need to be done, and that we arent in a good place right now...but somehow it just didnt jive with me all the time.