EPIPHYTE (borrowed from a botanical term) is a bi-pedal powered, interactive video installation that seeks to explore notions of sustainability and infosthetics by revealing the hidden history of products. Basically, its what happens when you take a stationary exercise bicycle and hook it up to Max/MSP & Jitter software to manipulate video playback of a product’s mini-narrative. The user is helping to spin a narrative infographic – such that(for instance) a iPod map backwards from Boulder-to-Cupertino-to-Taiwan and India, as it follows the production chain back to its beginnings – the path extrapolates to visualize the many outsourced or subcontracted geospatial components. The end result (hopefully) allows for reflection as the EPIPHYTE installation reveals the hidden social & environmental impact and the often counter-intuitive costs of our everyday consumption on a global scale.
Epiphyte was at the ATLAS Institute for Art, Media and Performance at CU Boulder during the month of April. The interactive installation is now at the Object+Thought gallery, 3559 Larimer Street, downtown Denver for the month of May. Epiphyte is a joint project of the Sustainable Media Lab, comprised of Sarah Chung, Robert Fitzgerald, Paul Gerhardt and Marko Manriquez.