Installations
For(Loop){Meditations;} is an immersive, interactive inquiry into how a computer meditates. Or perhaps it's a phenomenological reflection on the iterative nature of human prayer. In either case, it is a digital meditation on an image from the inside out.
A "for() loop" is how a computer views an image. The programming function moves through the image, pixel by pixel, performing some action with each pixel before moving on to the next. Yet the same logic, in fact, could describe the use of prayer beads across many eastern and western religious traditions, as one moves from bead to bead, performing some prayer with each bead before moving on the the next. In coding terms, perhaps it could be written, "for(int bead=0; bead<12; bead++) {sayPrayer();}" As our sacred space converges with cyber space, what new types of mediation enter into the "unmediated immediacy" of our mystical experiences? How does the digital inflect our spiritual lives, and how does the spiritual pervade our digital interactions? What is the nature of the meditative image when dematerialized into the consuming multiplicity of photons, ones and zeros?
The installation consists of a strand of push-button prayer beads which facilitates a meditation on an image, pixel by pixel, each bead changing the color of the light in the room to the color that pixel. Viewers are invited, one-by-one, to immerse themselves in these meditative images, iterating through them and connecting with this simultaneously ancient and contemporary practice.
FOR MORE ON THE 3 YEAR LONG JOURNEY TO THIS PROJECT'S COMPLETION, SEE HERE