Studio Museum Exhibition

Studio Museum Exhibition

Studio Museum Exhibition

Studio Museum Exhibition

Studio Museum Exhibition

Studio Museum Exhibition

Studio Museum Exhibition is part of a group show entitled ‘Harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor’ at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. The exhibition examines Harlem as a cultural, architectural, territorial, psychological, historic and economic site through the commissioning the work of eighteen architects. This commission provoked the analysis of land use and demographic data which revealed a scarcity of public library resources. To address this scarcity, the Harlem Mediatech proposes to exploit the accumulation of volumes in electronic databases while using the vast array of vacant and abandoned sites in the district. The Harlem Mediatech is a branch library without printed books, however, with the potential to access a near infinite number of volumes through the Internet. It becomes an elevated interactive façade and the ground plane becomes a public park. The installation mimics the dimensions and materiality of the proposed Harlem Mediatech façade. A large digital display shows a live video composite illustrating the spatial experience of a user of the mediatech. Two live video streams are composited. The first stream is a live video of the museum viewer in front of the exhibit. The exhibit which mimics the interior of the mediatech façade sets up the museum viewer as an occupant of the mediatech. The second live video stream is from a remotely located camera on one of the proposed sites of the mediatech. This camera is positioned on what would be the second floor of the mediatech and looks down towards the adjacent sidewalk. Software facilitates the composite through chroma-key matting to create a live video of the museum viewer in the mediatech. Live video installation becomes a form of architectural representation.