Nature as a TV Guide
Sheldon Brown
The Video Wind Chimes hang, innocuous during the day. Image courtesy of Sheldon Brown.
The Video Wind Chimes is a public artwork/video installation that connects the movement of the wind to the revelation of the pervasive electromagnetic fields that inhabit the atmosphere, particularly those that are encoded and transmitted as part of broadcast television. The piece consists of four video projectors mounted inside of winged housings, suspended 20′ above the ground, projecting a focused television image on the ground. As the wind blows the chimes, causing them to sway in the wind, they change the tuning of the television signal that they are displaying. The viewer, entering the shifting field of the projected image, reveals a condition that we are constantly a part of, whether the television is on or not, blurring assumed boundaries between nature and culture. The Video Wind Chimes arise out of several concerns I have had about television and its transformation of lived experience. In this piece I am trying to show how media technologies transform physical realities. By connecting the force of the wind in the air with the changing frequencies of a television image I am trying to increase awareness of this all pervasive field of structured electromagnetic waves, and that the viewer, entering into the field of the projected image, reveals a condition that we are constantly a part of, whether the TV is on or not.
