Gibson + Recoder
Public artist talk
Friday, October 4, 2pm, Emory University, Rich Hall, rm 108

Sixty movies for sixty windows.
To accompany the world premiere of Modular Grid (Video Mosaic) [Digital video, color, sound, 19 minutes, 2021–2024] at Off the Wall @ 725 Ponce on October 4 + 5, internationally-celebrated artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder will give a free and public lecture at Emory on their art and practice across media, from analog film-based gallery installations to site-specific camera obscuras. Modular Grid represents the artists’ first foray into video and is a newly commissioned work for Off The Wall. It is the first installment in a series of works for large-scale site-sensitive video projection. For this iteration of Modular Grid, the artists have tapped into their video archive to tailor a work that maps seamlessly onto the projection grid window façade of the building at 725 Ponce.

The individual movies in this monumental video wallpaper tapestry are the result of a performative and highly improvisatory analogue feedback system in which a vintage video synthesizer produces its own self-generating imagery. The operator is but a mere functionary in this system and is placed on standby mode in order to capture in real time the convulsive beauties of an everchanging electronic video signal jam.

The original source material for this work was generated during a one-week residency at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University in the Summer of 2021, generating hours of footage from various sources, including Sandin IP video synthesizer, David Jones MVIP digital video image processor, and Blackmagic video mixer. The artists returned to IEA in the Summer of 2024 to revisit and edit the material for their Atlanta premiere.

To take advantage of the audio capabilities at Off The Wall @ 725 Ponce, the artists collaborated with sound artist Richard Garet to produce an original soundtrack. Garet’s practice uniquely explores the concept of “Material Sound,” where the material itself becomes an instrument. By using unconventional tools like modified audiocassettes, amplified EMF emissions, and digital glitches, Garet transforms physical materials into sources of sound. Special thanks to Rebekkah Palov for technical assistance at IEA.

Made possible with support from Emory University's Department of Film and Media, Emory’s Hightower Fund, and Emory’s Arts and Humanistic Inquiry initiative.

About Gibson + Recoder:
Collaborating artists Sandra Gibson (b. 1968, Portland, OR) and Luis Recoder (b. 1971, San Francisco, CA) have been exhibiting their expanded cinema installations and projection performances since 2000. Their works are in the permanent collections of major art museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, and Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany. Artist awards and commissions include the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy, National Endowment for the Art’s U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship, and Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Mad. Sq. Art in New York. Lecturing appointments include both long and short-term teaching residencies in the media departments of the University of Colorado Boulder, Denison University in Ohio, and California Institute for the Arts. They were featured artists and research associates of RESET
THE APPARATUS! A Survey of the Photographic and the Filmic in Contemporary Art, hosted by the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Gibson + Recoder live and work in New York.

About Off the Wall:
The largest movie screen in the Southeast, illuminating Atlanta's Beltline Trail with film and video art from around the world. Curated by Emory associate professor of film and media Gregory Zinman.