Chandelier (CAMS)

Gallery 16 began a relationship with artist Elliot Anderson in 1996. He was among a handful of artists in California gaining prominence for their investigations into the use of electronic media.

In the 1980's, Anderson worked as a computer graphics engineer. This training and his interest in concepts of interactivity led him to create dynamic environments using the computer, sound and video. His work integrates interactive computer sculpture, installation, public art, video for performance, and digital photography. He creates computer controlled interactive video sets for New Music and Dance performances, exhibiting and performing them widely throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and in such domestic venues as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Over the subsequent years G16 has presented several distinct bodies of Elliot’s work, all of them consider how our relationship to imagery positions us as spectators. His series CAMS, explored the phenomenon of people’s use of the webcam to document their lives in real time. Anderson watched hundreds of live internet’s feeds for several years capturing the banal moments in webcam users lives. He isolated 1500 still frames in an updated twist on photographic street photography, using the internet as the “street." A selection of these images were given to a number of poets and fiction writers to create a fictionalized story using the image as a starting place.