Ambient Walk, 2012

Ed Janzen - Kingsville, Canada

New Media Installation, Performance

The artist navigates the back alleys of the city on foot with a video camera focused down on the walking surface.  As surfaces rapidly pass by the lens, an unusual perspective of the city is captured. The visual result is highly animated with an endless variety of pattern, line, and colour. The rhythm of his footsteps and surrounding human and machine activity adds an ambient sound mix.

Back alleys present an alternative for travel through the city, outside the traditional grid of streets and sidewalks. They offer a more private view of the city. These nameless, interstitial spaces are where deliveries are made, where workers sneak a smoke, where the detritus of commerce and habitation accumulates and is carted off.  Underfoot, a variety of surface materials, transformed by histories of repair, neglect and wear, are patched, cracked and broken. Debris is strewn and crushed by machine and human traffic. These hidden environments can provide an abundance of aesthetic opportunities.

This experience is channeled through cyberspace, and shared via live stream. Janzen’s movement will be tracked via GPS.  Audiences can immerse themselves in the resulting multimedia installation on multiple video screens and speakers at the viewing location, and on their mobile devices.

Janzen is a video and installation artist from Kingsville, Ontario, whose work has traveled to art galleries, public spaces and experimental video festivals internationally. His current practice examines everyday phenomena and experience, and the gaps between real and virtual space.

Learn More

edjanzen.ca/nuit

37

10 Dundas Street East (On the third floor in the food court.)

This project is both indoors and outdoors.