June-July 2015
Esther Klein Gallery, Breadboard/University City Science Center, Philadelphia, PA
Curated by Kristen Neville Taylor
“Wilderness Collider” is a generative real-time Internet web app installation that uses people’s digital data, including tweets, texts, photos, and GPS coordinates from a mobile app called Indeterminate Hikes, which the artists also made. All this information from previous participants who have used the app is then intertwined into a moving-image collage. The artists encourage visitors to download the app–a QR code is available to scan in the gallery–and document their journeys into natural and urban settings. The collected imagery allows us to vicariously travel near and far with strangers and see evolving landscapes of the 21st century. EcoArtTech’s design of a campfire scene (log, a laptop computer, and rock pile) is not accidental. Similar to Kessler’s “The Pine Barrens: Four Fires” videos, the meta-campfire exemplifies a meeting place both in the real world and online for sharing life’s experiences.
Find Martin Aguilar’s review of The Usable Earth on The Art Blog.