Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the
New York City Metropolitan Transit
Authority,
Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.
Since 2003, the MTA has made available for exhibition purposes 80 LED screens located at subway
entrances across New York City. Unfortunately, the high cost of exhibiting
(an estimated
$274,000 per month per screen)
prevents most artists from having access to these facilities. While the MTA's
effort to create more opportunities for video art exhibition in public spaces is to be commended,
selected works remain wholly fixated on
commercial goods and media conglomerate events, a short-sighted curatorial choice that regrettably
ignores the full potential of these promising exhibition spaces.
In an attempt to broaden the scope of MTA's video art series, Pixelator takes video pieces currently
on display and diffuses them into a pleasant array of 45 blinking, color-changing squares. Since the project is an
anonymous collaboration, the resulting video is
almost entirely unplanned and unanticipated, with the original artists helping to create new works
of art without any knowledge of their participation.
(Translation: Pixelator turns those ugly, blinding video billboard ads into art.)
