Some raw footage and images from the in-progress work on Strip LFE (working title, it means “Lakefront east”), due to debut on Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center’s video facade on April 2012. This is done using a modified version of the rig+software I made for previous Strip projects. When watching, use headphones for a pretty intense experience, as this piece involves audio as well.

Some notes about the project: The current iteration in the Strip series takes place in and around the north-eastern part of the Chicago Loop, mostly centered around a recent development called “Lake Shore East”, encompassing some of the most expensive real estate in Chicago. It is a unique location in Chicago, embodying in my mind much of what is both fascinating and horrifying about this metropolis. The development’s focal point is a meticulously designed and landscaped park, which is completely surrounded by a wall of skyscrapers and luxury condoes above ground, and heavy traffic arteries on multiple levels, in all directions. It is also undermined by the several underground levels of Lower Wacker Drive and it’s adjoining “streets”, the literal underbelly / underworld of the Chicago loop. All of these combine to create a place that in essence has no ground: a precisely engineered bubble floating on massive layers of busy infrastructure, of machinery and movement- a massive, grounded spaceship. I have been riding through this landscape since August, testing and mapping the different access and egress routes, the permeability of the bubble and what it means to move between the layers and worlds comprising this location. The final structure & content of the installation is still in development. In general, the concept involves spiraling into and out of the green center of this area while weaving up and down, in and out of the underground, all done in single long takes that seem to move between night and day and even times of year, as well as figuration and abstraction. Sound is also an important element in this piece: every slice of video comprising the strip plays its audio at the same moment, creating a strange doppler effect as sounds from different, adjacent locations play in unison.

Strip / O was shot on the site of the Oprah Farewell Spectacular, around United Center in Chicago in May 2011.

Underground Studies are images from the initial excursions undertaken as preparations for a third Strip video, this time under and over the surface of the northern part of the Chicago Loop, a uniquely multi-layered urban space.

Strip: Iris is a project in which a body was scanned using a similar continuous motion, additionally mediating the body’s image through it’s reflection in the scanning person’s eye. It utilizes a special miniature eye-camera, such as used in my video Coms Device. The first two images in this series are nude self portraits.

A performer re-delivers in realtime an improvised version of a monologue she listens to via an ipod, about an incident involving an invented digital scanning device in an Israeli army checkpoint in Palestine, and related events. She is only visible through her reflection in the camera-person’s eyeball (he is also the one who recorded the original monologue). The image is acquired via a lo-fi version of an eye-tracking camera rig, such as is normally used for psychology and market research.

A short text about the piece was written by Shirley Bahar from NYU, for my solo show “Seret” at Julie M Gallery in Tel Aviv on June 2011.

Below are additional images from the production process on the piece, including the improvised eye-camera I constructed to capture it: