Dave Ryan & Pat Kelley: 'Engine Room,' A New Media Installation for Computer Lab

Gould Library, Main Floor Computer Lab, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Engine Room [click image] transforms the library's computer lab into a large-scale installation that examines the use of search engines to sift through an incomprehensible volume of information and how the search process becomes an engine of cultural transformation.

As the web searcher pursues the meaning and associations of a word, a trace of the surfing process is left in the form of related images forgotten in the browser's image cache. Engine Room animates the debris of actual searches; each screen presents the visual results of a search for a specific word. The deluge of images and text provides the only lighting in the room and illuminates a silhouetted figure on each screen, accompanied by an electronic voice babbling at blazing speed.

Each computer in Engine Room plays a short movie in a loop. A brief panning shot of a swamp appears in the loop covered by the loud sound of spring peepers. As each loop is a different length, the panning shots sync up in random patterns and the sound of the peepers swirls around the room.

The effect of the group is an intense sensory "thrum" in the depths of the library suggesting a subtle sense of movement of the establishment itself. Engine Room transforms the library's computer lab into a large-scale installation that examines the use of search engines to sift through an incomprehensible volume of information and how the search process becomes engine of cultural transformation. Dave Ryan graduated with a MFA in Film from Ohio University. His videos have gained recognition at some of the most important venues for video art including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Video Festival and the Locarno Video Art festival. He was selected for a 2003 Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship.

Patrick Kelley received his MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is a 2001 recipient of a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Photography. He is also a recipient of a Jerome/Blacklock Nature Sanctuary Fellowship Residency and a Jerome/Forecast Public Art Works Installation Commission for the Open Book Literary Arts Building in Minneapolis.

Sequence from Engine Room

Engine Room Web site
Dave Ryan: "Chroma Zone"
Patrick Kelley
Digital Arts Festival in the Gould Library