Artists Statement

The video-and-sound works of Deborah Cornell, visual artist and Richard Cornell, composer, center on environmental themes relating regional and global arenas, crossing disciplines by using immersive-yet-invasive techniques. This talk will describe previous works, and building into a large-scale work-in-progress – Dys/sonance & Dys/ruption , an installation foregrounding human presence as a catalyst of disruption in natural systems – through interactive transformations in the work. The methods we use also involve a form of visual disruption – printed wall murals, with two-channel video projections that perceptually transform what is before the viewer, confusing what is actual with what is changing, even as the participants make interjections that affect elements in the work.
This new interactive project thus involves active disruption – and also metaphorically relates to the problem of “glitch” in its largest sense. Small environmental miscalculations have built into climate change and its intense repercussions, resulting from direct and indirect human activity that interferes with the sustaining order that supports human existence. Spinoffs from this glitch include sinking cities, wet deserts that corrode formerly desiccated structures, acidification of oceans. Adaptable and optimistic, humans fully intend to accommodate and adjust to this glitch as best they can – but at some point the consequences may turn unsustainable – which would become a much more extreme glitch than the simple beginnings of climate inversion now evident. Through interactive electronics, our newest work seeks to create both a sense of personal responsibility and a sense of direct agency affecting the simulated “world” we present.
Our new work utilizes projected two-channel video onto a large printed mural, electronic sound, and interactive processing to create a variable work that can be either disrupted or re-formed by visitors’ input (= human voice). Real time computation of one of the video projections simulates the flocking behavior of birds in migration. Using a microphone, ambient sound is analyzed for peak frequency. When peak frequency is in the characteristic range of human speech, its amplitude affects the transparency/color of the images and they fade. When amplitude drops below threshold level the images gradually re-emerge. The interactivity is not overt but builds from effects that are subtle and surprising. The conversation of the humans present in the space creates random effects within the work that reflects the altering course generated by human interference with the environment.

• Deborah Cornell is the Chair of Printmaking at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, USA. Her works in printmaking and multimedia installation are shown internationally, with recent solo shows in Buenos Aires, Venice, Iceland, and St. Petersburg Russia, as well as in New York and Boston. Group exhibitions include Photo Image: Prints from 60s to 90s at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 6th Biennial at A.I.R. Gallery New York, 5th Novosibirsk Biennial, Global Matrix at the Northern Illinois University Museum, Potenti Imprezioni in Washington DC, Unexpected Consequences at Madison WI, and exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cuba, the UK, Columbia, Mexico, Italy, and across Europe. Her work has been supported with a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard University and grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Deya Majorca Archaeological Foundation, and with prizes from Purdue University, Majestic Galleries, and The Boston Printmakers, among others. Public collections include the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Australian National Collection, Hangzhau Academy China, Purdue University Museums, Sakimi Art Museum, Okinawa, the Boston Public Library, IBM Corporation, Gannett Corporation, Fidelity Management, the University of Colorado, the Worcester Museum, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and many others. deborahcornell.com
• Richard Cornell works in a range of symphonic and chamber music forms, as well as computer-mediated sound art. He has awards from the Fromm Music Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the New England Foundation for the Arts. The chamber orchestra A Far Cry, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Musica Viva, New England Philharmonic, Collage New Music, the International Trumpet Guild, the Muir Quartet, and others have commissioned his works. Cornell’s collaborations with visual artists have been presented at the Krakow Triennial, Hafnarborg Museum (Reykyavik), International Symposium on Electronic Art (Dubai and Vancouver), ProyectoACE (Buenos Aires), the Kala Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and the Ruschman Gallery (Indianapolis). Virtual reality artworks, developed with visual artist Deborah Cornell have been presented at Indiana University, Boston CyberArts, SuperComputing, at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and at the Taipei Biennial. Cornell’s works are recorded on Ravello, Northeastern Records, Sony Classical, and EMI/Virgin Veritas labels, and distributed worldwide by Naxos. hbu.edu/cfa/profile/richard-cornell