
Self-Conscience/Physical Memory
2019 Self-Conscious/Physical Memory is a kinetic, neurofeedback art installation located in the University of Houston’s Non-invasive Brain-Machine interface Laboratory with support from the NSF and UH’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Viewers are fitted with a wireless EEG headset that measures electrical activity in the brain. That brain activity is then translated into light, motion, and sound in real-time.
Special thanks to:
Dr. Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, Dr. Jesus Gabriel Cruz Garza, Dr. Atilla Kilicarslan, Akshay Ravindran, T Lavois Thiebaud, James Templeton, Austin Moreau, Marianna Zanovello, Dr. Andrew Paek, Dr. Yongtian He, Daniel Schaeffer, David Eguren, Dr. Aaron Becker, Rhema Ike, Manuel Cestari, Josiah Cherian, Christian Alarcon, Dr. Kevin Nathan, and Dr. Anton Nijholt
How We Come to Feel Safe
2018 How We Come to Feel Safe is a two axis robot that uses computer vision software to find and fire a laser at red balloons.
Array
Description
2016 Array was an interactive a/v installation of LCD video monitors hung facing downward from the ceiling of the gallery about four feet off the floor. Below the monitors is a viewing area with movable seating. The sound and video evolve based on input from the viewers in the space, evolving/randomized text pulled from the New York Times api, and a drone synthesizer oscillating at a root frequency of 432 hz.Statement
Throughout human history, we have looked up in order to observe, catalogue, map coordinates, install communication networks, and mine information. We are interested in this act of looking up, of observation for the sake of mapping patterns and discovery, how it is that we have recognized asterisms in order to identify localities, navigate, and mark the passage of time, how data networks traverse land and sea while satellites and drones bounce information around the planet, how different networks – data, social, communication, neural, intelligence gathering – fold into one another. We are curious about what our minds construct, between what’s actual and imagined, in the gaps and ruptures, the fragments of objective truth kneaded into projections of ourselves.We are also inspired by that meditative moment of casual imagination, the bucolic daydream, those moments of mental and physical leisure when we loosen the grip on our conscious thoughts and allow our eyes to build and re-build the clouds and stars and vast spaces we usually ignore.
{exurb} was a collaboration of Patrick Renner, Stephen Kraig, Johnny DiBlaisi, and Eric Todd from 2011 to 2016.
Video by Ronald L. Jones
Topologies
Description
2015 Topologies was an interactive installation utilizing a network of rope hung overhead in the John M. O’Quinn gallery at Lawndale Arts Center. The grid moved vertically based on real-time weather data from the 30 largest cities in the world.Statement
Our discussion around this piece was originally born out of an idea to create a moving ceiling that could be seen from above (from Lawndale’s Mezzanine) or below. We wanted to use the architecture of the gallery to create an installation that lives within it, that uses the gallery itself as its canvas.
The idea of a shifting overhead plane made us think of geology, of landscape, and of the ways in which we quantify and define location. With that in mind we chose data points that are common distinguishing features of a place but that also vary in real time to drive the movement along each of the four structural pillars in the gallery.What we landed on is a reconstruction of a landscape painting, the abstract made physical (or the physical abstract), but hopefully more than anything the beginnings of a conversation about what exists in the definition of a place.
{exurb} was a collaboration of Patrick Renner, Stephen Kraig, Johnny DiBlaisi, and Eric Todd from 2011 to 2016.
Video by Jonathan Jindra.
OCTA
2016 OCTA was an audiovisual performance and motion-tracking interactive installation featured at Day for Night 2016 by LIMB, Daniel Schaeffer, and Eric Todd utilizing an 8-channel audio system and over 6000 individually addressable LED’s.
CRASIS
2014 CRASIS was a hybrid music/art event curated by Eric Todd at Tha Brandon Contemporary in in 2014, featuring work by LIMB, {exurb}, Roger Sellers, Patrick Renner, FLCON FCKER, Stephen Farris, Light Art Interactive, Jonathan Jindra.
Video by Jonathan Jindra.
waveForms
2013 waveForms was an interactive light and sound installation by {exurb} installed at the University of Indianapolis’ Wheeler Arts Center.
{exurb} was a collaboration of Patrick Renner, Stephen Kraig, Johnny DiBlaisi, and Eric Todd from 2011 to 2016.
Galapagos
2012 Galapagos
For the 24 hour period of the 22nd of September 2012, {exurb} collective members Patrick Renner, Stephen Kraig, and Eric Todd locked themselves into the gallery space at El Rincon Social to build an improvised installation piece. Viewers could watch the artists through a one-way mirrored window into the gallery space or via a virtual gallery of time lapse video projections (made up of still photographs taken once a minute from four different angles in the room and converted into four live-updating time-lapse video projections) and live audio documenting the piece’s progression in real time.The above video begins with the time-lapse progression of the piece over the 24 hours and ends with a view of the finished work from the window to the gallery.
Mnemonic Cinema
2011 Mnemonic Cinema was a film installation featured in The Joanna’s November group show Dis Dat Dees Dose utilizing four vintage 8 and 16 mm projectors focusing four three minute looping home movies shot at iconic American vacation spots on the windows of the gallery and onto a screen outside.
{exurb} was a collaboration of Patrick Renner, Stephen Kraig, Johnny DiBlaisi, and Eric Todd from 2011 to 2016.
Input/Output
2011 Input/Output was a pair of acrylic “doorways” fitted with theremin antennae and custom tube amplifiers that respond to the movement of viewers’ bodies. The audio output from the theremins was then fed into custom video software and interpreted in a six channel video projection.
{exurb} was a collaboration of Patrick Renner, Stephen Kraig, Johnny DiBlaisi, and Eric Todd from 2011 to 2016.

