dbracken

[dbracken]

Island Antimetropia (2021) Binoculars, digital video

Antimetropia is a condition in which one eye is myopic (nearsighted) and the other eye is hyperopic (farsighted). Island Antimetropia is comprised of three sets of binoculars mounted directly into the gallery wall. Each eyepiece plays a video, the right consisting of aerial photographs of São Miguel Island and the left of microscopic images of plants from the same island, their patterns strikingly similar. Utilizing a quintessential tourist accessory, Island Antimetropia reflects on the act of looking at an unfamiliar place and the difficulty of seeing it with clarity.

Produced with the assistance of Walk&Talk - Arts Festival Additional photos by Mariana Lopes

[dbracken]

R-R-R Triple Junction (2021) Electroluminescent wire, resin, bell jars

In a darkened gallery, three rainbow-like arches glow with a mysterious presence. Contained under glass bell jars, cast in clear resin, and placed on pedestals, they are simultaneously seductive and absurd. Impossible to reach, untethered to a specific place, and created by an optical illusion, rainbows are an enduring symbol of humans' complicated relationship to the natural world. R-R-R Triple Junction looks at our persisting and sometimes irrational desire to capture and create imperfect representations of nature.

Produced with the assistance of Walk&Talk - Arts Festival Additional photos by Mariana Lopes

[dbracken]

Superhost (2021) 18 - 11″x14″ Paper prints, LED light

Eighteen sheets of paper have been mounted directly to the gallery wall and arranged in an orderly grid, each carrying a title of an Airbnb listing from São Miguel Island printed to its surface. They are blind debossed prints, where no ink is used in the process and only the imprint of the letterpress type remains. The prints were then taken to a public plaza in Ponta Delgada and placed facedown on basalt stone pavers, a construction material that is typically seen around the island. The irregular patterns of the stone were transferred to the prints by rubbing, creating a relief on the surface of the paper. Superhost considers the physical, economic, and cultural impacts on the places we visit and how technological change is constantly influencing these factors.

Produced with the assistance of Walk&Talk - Arts Festival Additional photos by Mariana Lopes

[dbracken]

To Catch a Wave (2021) Wood, LED lights, electronics, audio

To Catch a Wave is a nearly 2.5 meter diameter circle, painted flat black, and mounted just off the gallery wall – its presence in the room both ominous and calming. Blue LED lights embedded on the reverse side are synchronized to a recording of ocean waves, brightening as the volume increases, illuminating the circle from behind. The work is a meditation on the often substantial gaps between our lived experience and our attempts to reproduce them.

Produced with the assistance of Walk&Talk - Arts Festival Additional photos by Mariana Lopes

[dbracken]

Respire (2020)

Sound, LED lights, electronics

Respire was a multi-channel sound and light installation that utilized disused pipework in the filtration room at the Carrie Furnaces, a former blast furnace on the banks of the Monongahela River, just outside of Pittsburgh. Inside this darkened space, the sound of breathing emanated from inside three sections of rusted ducting. With each breath in, a light inside the steel conduit synchronously brightened, illuminating a section of the room, only to darken again with each exhalation. The work is a timely consideration of the precarious nature of our air quality, our bodies, and our ability to breathe freely. Set amidst this mechanical room, Respire makes an invisible action visible and connects an essential function of human life to a dying industrial ruin.

This project was part of LightPlay, in partnership with Rivers of Steel.

[dbracken]

Missing You (2020)

Geolocated audio walk

Missing You is an app-based audio walk created by artist and musician Danny Bracken. The walk invites listeners to traverse the streets of Ponta Delgada, Azores while listening to a collection of geolocated recordings produced by the artist near his home in Pittsburgh. Unable to travel to the Walk&Talk festival due to COVID-19, Bracken took a series of walks while playing guitar, using binaural recordings to evoke a sensation of walking alongside him as he plays. Ambient sounds of passing cars, humming air-conditioning units, and chirping birds conjure the environment in which these short musical gestures were created and map it onto an alternate landscape. Transportive and grounding, this place-based experience connects listeners with their surroundings on São Miguel while at the same time immersing them in the textures and rhythms of a place far away. Creating the simple impression of taking a walk with the artist, this work invites a small moment of human intimacy in a time of isolation and absence.

Headphones are highly recommended.

Video by Walk&Talk

Audio recording by Erin Anderson All music by Danny Bracken Besides: "In The End" by Daniel Bracken Sr. "Wild Mountain Thyme" Irish / Scottish traditional And a section of lyrics from "Keep on the Sunny Side" by Ada Blenkhorn

This project was created for Walk&Talk 9.5 - an annual Arts Festival of the Azores.

Visit https://bit.ly/missingyou2020 for more information. 

Danny Bracken · W&T 9.5 Radio Edit

[dbracken]

To Heaven and Back (audio walk) (2019)

Geolocated audio walk

To Heaven and Back is an immersive audio walk of the city steps in Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill neighborhood. Using geolocated audio, this self-guided, app-based walk invites you to listen in on the stories, struggles, memories, and dreams of Troy Hill residents as you weave your way up and down the steps that span the neighborhood.

More information about the walk can be found at www.TroyHillSteps.com

This project was made in conjunction with a temporary installation. More information can be found here.

This project is a collaboration with Erin Anderson, in partnership with BikePGH, The Office of Public Art, and Troy Hill Citizens. This program is generously supported by the Hillman Foundation.

Video footage by David Bernabo.

Photographs by Lindsay Dill.

[dbracken]

To Heaven and Back (installation) (2019)

12 channels of audio, 24 sound-activated LED fixtures, 500’ of stairs

To Heaven and Back was a temporary sound and light installation along the nearly 500 feet of stairs on the dizzyingly steep Rialto Street in Pittsburgh's Troy Hill neighborhood. As visitors walked the steps, they would hear a synchronized musical composition and collage of residents’ voices. Each speaker was connected to a pair of lights, illuminating as the volume increased, so that the neighbors voices lit the stairs.

An ongoing self-guided audio walk continues to be available. More information can be found here.

This project was a collaboration with Erin Anderson, in partnership with BikePGH, The Office of Public Art, and Troy Hill Citizens. This program is generously supported by the Hillman Foundation.

Video footage by David Bernabo.

Photographs by Lindsay Dill.

[dbracken]

Still (2018) 

Electroluminescent wire, monofilament, sound, computer, sensor, custom software, micro-controller

Still is a subtly interactive installation that uses multi-channel sound and electroluminescent wire (a phosphor coated, glowing wire) to explore ideas of movement and stillness. Left alone, the installation plays a musical sequence that is synchronized to sections of tensioned wire, each illuminating as sound plays. As people enter the space, a sensor detects their movement and pauses the work, turning on only when there is stillness. Unlike much interactive art, which asks the viewer to do something in order to experience the work, the piece is only activated when the space is motionless.

This work was made with the support of Subnet, The Center for Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Salzburg, and Harvestworks.

[dbracken]

What Does It Mean? (2014)

water, video projection, theater light, sound

The title of What Does It Mean? is in reference to a popular video posted to youtube in January, 2010. Titled, Double Rainbow, the video became a hit and has since been viewed over 40 million times. In it we see a handheld camera, capturing the uploader’s ecstatic response to seeing a double rainbow in his front yard somewhere outside of Yosemite National Park.

Undoubtedly, it was his over the top reaction, not the actual rainbow in the video, that caused it to go viral. Like so many attempts to record nature, the end product usually falls short of the real thing, and all we’re left with is a shaky video of one man’s experience of the natural world. Yet despite the absurdity of the video, there is something moving in it; perhaps part of us wishes we could see the world as the videographer does, in complete bewilderment of nature's presence. Near the middle of the video he asks "what does it mean?", a response many of us might have upon seeing such a rainbow, whether it be in a national park or one created in the basement of an art museum.

[dbracken]

Heavy Times​ ​(2018)

Electroluminescent wire, brick - dimensions variable

Heavy Times portrays a standard construction brick suspended by a short length of glowing wire. Much like the world we currently find ourselves in, there’s a beauty and tension that exists in its simple construction. The contrast between the glow of the wire and the solid weight of the brick is simultaneously startling and seductive.

[dbracken]

Rising, Gathering (2016) Installation and digital photo print Commissioned by Start with Art: Pittsburgh 

“Rising, Gathering is a photograph of a sculpture I made in Pittsburgh’s Riverview Park. What at first glance may appear to be a digital drawing or long exposure image is instead a 75’ length of electroluminescent wire strung in the woods and between the trees. I wanted to create something that causes you to pause and consider what you’re seeing, an object that seems at the same time to be there yet not there. Ultimately, I was drawn to the image because it’s a little mysterious, slightly confusing, and subtly magical. Though I’m not a parent myself, I imagine raising children to be a similar mix of these beautiful and sublime elements.” - November 2016

[dbracken]

Two Views: Kanaaldijk (2016)

video, wooden enclosures, hardware

Two videos are hung side by side, floating centimeters off the gallery wall. One is a recording of beautiful fall day at sunset alongside the Twentekanaal, a large man made canal near the eastern edge of the Dutch border. The video was created by recording images taken from Google Street View. Facing away from the viewer and towards the gallery wall, the scene becomes abstracted into soft hues of color, obscuring our view of this idyllic Dutch landscape. The second video contains simple animations that have been made to replicate these abstracted impressions, thus making uncertain which is the original view of the canal and which is the synthesized creation.

[dbracken]

Before, After, Today (2016)

Silk-screened glow-in-the-dark prints, programmed lights

The Roombeek fireworks disaster of 2000 (Vuurwerkramp in Dutch) dramatically reshaped the architectural and geographic layout of this neighborhood in Enschede, NL and provided architects and planners a unique opportunity to create and recreate an entire urban area. Before, After, Today are three illustrations based on maps from before the disaster, after the disaster, and of present day Roombeek. They have been printed using glow-in-the-dark ink on white paper and hang in the gallery’s windows, appearing and disappearing as programmed lights fade up and down.

[dbracken]

What Remains (2016)

Video projection, fabric, glow-in-the-dark ink

We tend to think of buildings as being fixed and permanent, unmovable physical objects that not only comprise our homes and businesses, but are often representations of our collective identity. Yet in reality, buildings can materialize or vanish with astonishing speed. Driven by economic factors, natural and human made disasters, popular opinion, and government policies, these structures are perhaps more intangible and fleeting than they appear.

What Remains is comprised of illustrations based on maps from a neighborhood in Enschede, the Netherlands that has seen dramatic changes over the past century. Once a primary site of the region’s famous textile industry, the majority of the buildings have subsequently been demolished for the construction of a housing complex. The images are projected on to fabric which has been painted with glow-in-the-dark ink, fading and reappearing with the passage of time.

[dbracken]

FEEEEDBAAAACK (2015)

EL wire, sound, software, live video, projector 

Created for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, FEEEEDBAAAACK utilizes live video, interactive sound, and sculpture to create an immersive installation. The work is a playful exploration on our concepts of materiality and ideas of self in the digital age. 

[dbracken]

An Evening Walk (2015)

Video, book, iPhone

How pleasant, as the sun declines, to view The spacious landscape change in form and hue! Here, vanish, as in mist, before a flood Of bright obscurity, hill, lawn, and wood; There, objects, by the searching beams betrayed, Come forth, and here retire in purple shade; Even the white stems of birch, the cottage white, Soften their glare before the mellow light;

- An Evening Walk, William Wordsworth

A book of William Wordsworth’s collected poetry has been bolted two inches off a gallery wall.  Embedded on the backside of the book is an iPhone. We cannot see the device or the screen, just its soft glow bouncing against the white wall. We see shifting shades of blues, greens, and pinks; the colors of a summer sunset captured on video.