Artist Documentation
Matthew Nelson is a visual artist living in Chicago. Primarily working in New Media, his practice focuses on the remapping of space. By programming controlled combinations and permutations, Nelson creates multiple iterations of the explored space. His installations consist of video, prints, or animations that create a disconnect, asking the viewer to reconstruct or reevaluate the space at hand. He currently teaches in the Art and Technology Department at the School of the Art institute of Chicago, where he is also an Academic Advisor.
Individuals relate to domestic environments in multiple and complex ways: memories are made and stored; routines are carried out; and for the fortunate, shelter and security are found in such spaces. In my recent work my interest lie in exploring the function of domestic space through fracturing and playing with its use. I program custom electronics to control existing elements within the architecture of the studied space.
In Every Combination: Lights On, Lights Off, 2007, a multi-channel video installation, the existing light fixtures become the controlled combination. Through turning the lights on and off in every possible permutation, the programmed code shows the space a new light. The shadows and bleeds of light between the rooms create the potential for the viewer to remap or reconstruct the space. Marshall McLuhan (1) states, "electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message..." Thus allowing the logic structure of the code to be seen and to have an effect on the physicality of the space. Every permutation, a form of combinatorics or ordered combinations, is the logic that is programmed to alter the space. I see combinations as metaphors for potential possibilities. A way of seeing or exhausting the possibilities in which to view the space or situation.
"Home is not an eternal value, but rather the function of a certain technique; yet, whoever loses his home, suffers. He is bound to his home by many threads, most of which are secret threads beyond his consciousness," Vilem Flusser (2).
1. McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium is the Message.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Reprint edition. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.
2. Flusser, Vilem. Taking Up Residence in Homelessness. Writings.
Andreas Strohl, editor; translated by Erik Eisel. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 2002.