As I did last year at THAT Camp, I will be creating a site-specific installation on the Video Wall (where we picked up all our food last year?)  This year’s piece is called “Writing Space,” and I look forward to everyone’s comments.

I imagine the Video Wall as a large writing space, and want to explore its compositional properties.  What does it mean to write on a surface divided into a grid of 16 squares?  What does it mean to “publish” in this fashion?  “Writing Space” is a text collage, fragments of text that, when juxtaposed in new ways, creates new meaning.  It is an example of my work with “mashup logic:” the mixing and juxtaposition of found objects recombined in novel ways.

Randomness is a key compositional element of the piece.  The text fragments—and the white space between them—appear in ever changing patterns and configurations.  Thus, the meaning of the text is constantly shifting as new juxtapositions form.  This installation/text will be different each time you view/read it over the course of THAT Camp.

So I am curious to know:  Is this an installation to look at or a text to be read?

Dave Staley