Exploded View (Commuters)
Jim Campbell
If you pause the work, the images become completely abstract. There is no way that you could figure out what you are looking at without the movement. So the movement in these works is really the most fundamental way your brain understands what you are looking at. It’s the primal aspect of what the image is.
(Jim Campbell)
Exploded View (Commuters) expands a flat, two-dimensional moving image into a three-dimensional space comprised of 1,152 hanging LEDs. When viewed from the front, the flickering of LEDs is recognized as commuters bustling through Grand Central Station, New York. Move closer or off axis and the flickering lights become abstract, seemingly random.
For many years, Jim Campbell has presented pixilated representations and ‘projections’ created with so few small lights that a viewer should not be able to comprehend what they are seeing. And yet, because of the brain’s ability to interpret abstract data and fill in the gaps in the information needed to create a complete idea, a viewer recognizes an image.
2011, custom electronics, 72 x 46 x 38 inches, 1152 LEDs, wire, steel
