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"Cleaning Out The Dead" [5 channel audio, custom fluorescents, reel-to-reel tape machine]

Randy is a man of about 70+ years. He is struggling with the futility of his mortality. He can feel his life winding down into nothingness, oblivion. In an attempt to preserve some part of himself, and hopefully reach out beyond his years into a future he could only imagine, he has recorded his dreams onto magnetic tape. Much like Samuel Beckett's aging character Krapp in "Krapp's Last Tape" he has made a document to preserve some part of himself and it is a reflection and a reminder of his own fading existence. He is a bit of an eccentric character, a dreamer always obsessed with the future, he imagines possibilities in broad strokes beyond the scale of his lifetime. The unbearable weight of living so far removed from the present has a paralyzing effect on him. He has difficulty obtaining a steady state of happiness or contentment. The future is not without hope, but there is a temporal limit to what he will achieve and experience in his lifetime.

The piece existed in a room of approximately 22 feet by 15 feet. As you walk into the entrance of the space the room is completely stark white with bright light emanating from 13 4' x 8' custom fluorescent fixtures on the walls, similar in feel to the sterile environment found in the end of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece "2001". A man's voice can be heard, deep and gravely "...I sat down where he had been, tired and depressed, just wishing I could ride wild in the night and again climb on boxcars to look at the night sky and dream of a future that I will never see...". The voice emanates from an old reel-to-reel tape machine on a pedestal in the center of the room. It is rolling tape. The monologue continues, accompanied by three dimensional ambisonic audio emanating from the four corners of the room. The accompanying audio is composed from field recordings and interacts with the monologue as a sort of psychic projection or the narrator.

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Construction and installation assistance: Zeb Ringer

Photo credit: Stefan Moore