Benjamin Keddy (MFA '13): Public Installation May 2-29

Now You see It, Now You See It

May 2-29

Sol Cafe, 1615 W. Howard St.

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 9, 8:00-11:00 PM

On Saturday, May 2, Alumnus Benjamin Keddy (MFA '13) will debut a site-specific, interactive installation at Sol Cafe in Rogers Park. 

Keddy utilizes video and motion-tracking technologies to project a virtual Sol Cafe onto the windows of the storefront next door. The projected image responds to activity inside Sol Cafe and the street outside, shifting to follow the movements of passers-by.

Read more about the project on DNAinfo.

RSVP to the reception on Facebook

Artist statement:

For most of us, both eyes work together to help us interpret depth and shape. Each eye views the same image somewhat differently and from a unique position, allowing us to interpret 3d shapes out of what would otherwise be a 2d image. As screen-based technology has evolved, our relationship to the flatness of the video image with its prescriptive interpretation of space and form has become more nuanced. The sightline in our spatial world is regularly interrupted as we periodically shift our gaze to the video displayed on the flat screens of our personal computing devices, requiring our eyes to shift focus from 3d form to a 2d plane and back again many times over the course of any given day.

 Now You See it, Now You See it. references this tension and the essence of space that digital photographs often capture. Images taken of a cafe are used to produce a 3d digital rendering of the interior space of the business, which is then projected onto the inside windows of the adjacent unoccupied storefront.

 The facsimile and the actual are presented side by side, inviting the audience to consider a relationship between the digital semblance of space and form and the actual to which it refers.