Joe
McKay

Big
Ups
Big
Ups is a site specific installation created for the
summer outdoor sculpture show at Long Island University
(Brooklyn Campus)
Big Ups is a game that is played by jumping on an electric doormat. The
mat is connected via a computer to two 27" TV monitors, stacked on
their sides. The higher you jump on the mat the further you propel the
ball into the air. If you are lucky (and talented) enough to have the
ball hit the top of the highest monitor it will stick and slowly drip
down. You will then be rewarded with a new slightly larger and slightly
heavier ball. There are seven levels in total, with the first being
pretty easy and the last being almost impossible.
There are no instructions for Big Ups. Part of the fun of the game is
in figuring out what to do, and watching others do the same. The area
the monitors are in is a public foyer. Viewers from here can see the
jumpers flailing around, but they cannot see the screen.
There are two mesh screens inside the box, one that's shaking
and one that's not. This shaking makes the letters shimmer with a moire
brilliance that mimics a computer screen. The text comes from my local
deli's ATM machine. I love how messed up life is that pressing "enter"
to exit makes perfect sense.
Although I spent more time and money on this piece than I expected to,
I am thinking of it as a prototype for other artworks to come.
ALL NEW! I sold the first attempt at the Art in General
Auction this fall, and had to have another go at it. Click here for a link to a
small video clip of the sculpture in action. I think it's working
pretty well. 
The
Infinite Fill Show
This was a really fun show organized by Jamie and Cory Arcangel at Foxy Production in the summer of 2004. The "infinite fill" refers to the old MacPaint fill patterns. The show was an open call and each piece was based on black and white repeating patterns. I did a director animation of overlapping patterns and alert sounds that were randomly looping. The computer was an old powerbook with a screen that had a band of pixels half way burned out. The messed up screen led to some beautiful banding as the broken computer tried to catch up to the spastic animation.
Tom Moody wrote a lot about the show, you can find an archive
here.
Prereview
(http://homepage.mac.
com/joester5/prereview)
Reviews of Movies that haven't come out yet and the reviewer hasn't
seen or otherwise have any idea about.
You know when you go to the movies and the trailers are playing and
there's this guy in front of you who insists on telling his girlfriend
why the movie is going to be good or bad for every single movie? Well
that guy is me and this is my web site. I began PreReview as a personal
writing exercise, and it has since gone on to be named "cool site of
the day" by coolsiteoftheday.com and "Unfortunate Site of the Week" by
Time Out NY. We have dozens of contributors and even our own annual
awards.
Back to page 1
These sculptures are hard to document and even harder to describe.
There are no titles yet, but probably will be eventually.
In one, the guts of an ink-jet printer sits on top of a
G3 powerbook. The printer has a LED light attached to the front of its
print head which moves back and forth in an erratic fashion. An image
of the printer is displayed on the screen, with the LED in the correct
location as if it were acting as a sort of digital mirror. I say "as
if" because there is no live camera in this piece. There's a definite
"tail wags the dog" quality to this sculpture as it's difficult to know
just what's controlling what.