Declarative Lamp Project Overview

The Declarative Lamp Project an overview In January 2007 the city of Boston was
partially paralyzed by a bomb scare wherein a number of found electronic
devices were seen as potential explosives The devices featured a number of small
flashing lights depicting a cartoon alien performing a
crude gesture. Intended to advertise the upcoming
season of a popular animated television show, this misadventure in guerrilla marketing
was perceived as a potential hazard to the population, or even worse, a terrorist act. The bomb
squad was called out to destroy the devices and the city's major traffic patterns
came to a standstill for most in afternoon My first thought upon hearing about the
Boston scare was that are fears had gotten the best
of us. My next thought was that I needed to address this in my
work as an electronic installation artist.

The Declarative Lamp Project, created in
collaboration with artist Rebecca Stern, uses electronic performance to explore
the extent to which fear has been instilled in American
culture. Witnesses in a park experience seemingly innocuous electronic pathway
lighting that comes alive at dusk with lights and voices in many languages
which declare, "I am NOT a bomb." Because these devices
exist in the natural environment and use human voices, I wished to add natural
and personal elements to the lamps' execution As a child I remember being fascinated
by the mathematical equation to calculate air temperature from the
frequency of cricket chirps. If one monitors a single chirping
cricket for 15 seconds, the number chirps plus 39
is the current air temperature in Farenheit. In our piece this equation has
been reversed to allow the evenings temperature to
establish the rhythm of the declarative voices.

In cold temperatures the lamp speak less
often than in warm. To give an innocuous overtone we chose a number Arts and Crafts style
solar powered garden lights as the framework within which to build
our project. Ordinarily these lamp store energy
during daylight hours engage in energy-efficient LED light at dusk. Ms Stern and I have repurposed these lamps
to flickr, as if they hold lightning bugs, in
correlation with the recorded messages.

This process begins at dusk, producing a
chorus of voices whose rhythm is directly related to the
temperature the evening air. The lamps each repeat the phrase, "I'm not
a bomb" in one of twelve languages. After a twenty
minute performance, the lamps power down to await the next
sunset..