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Strategic Technologies for Art, Globe and Environment
Dennis Summers
Since the mid 1980s Dennis Summers has shown artwork throughout the US and abroad. He has done small wall pieces and sculptures, but for many years mainly concentrated on large scale mixed- and multi-media installation work with occasional performance components. He wrote about this work for the Leonardo Journal in the Fall of 1996 ("Presenting Scientific Concepts with Methods and Forms from Primal Cultures: Mixed Media and Installation Artworks"). Quantum Dance Works was the original appellation for this body of work. More recently, his time has been split between three very different projects.
The Crying Post Project
In 2001 he began the global memorial artwork The Crying Post Project with multimedia markers placed at sites of environmental disasters (ten thus far), ranging from the Exxon Valdez to Bhopal. One of the most rewarding aspects of this project have come from the people he has met and worked with across the globe. In addition to the posts themselves, a series of digital prints have been created (included in an exhibition in Beijing during the Olympics) and an interactive 3D website. He wrote about this project for Leonardo in the Fall of 2003 ("The Crying Post Project: A Multi-Part, Multi-Media Artwork to Memorialize Global Sites of Pain.") Poet Janine DeBaise wrote an article for Orion Magazine (Winter, 2019) called "Cure for Pain."
Bhopal
Phase Shift and Interference Videos
In stark contrast to this somewhat conceptual project, in 2005 he began a series of CG color field videos called the Phase Shift Video Series. Inspired by the music of Steve Reich they consist of complex visual patterns that change by going in and out of phase over time. Visually beautiful they are also quietly meditative. These have been exhibited widely, including Russia, Mexico and Brazil. One of them was a purchase prize winner at La Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo in Almería, Spain in 2006. The newer Interference Series is some-what different, and one of them was notably commissioned for in 2017 for a giant outdoor screen in Detroit, MI.
Slow Light Shadow Matter
Slow Light Shadow Matter is a long-term project comprising 13 short computer generated animated videos. The imagery in SLSM consists of complex motion collages, combining modified representational and non-representational elements, text, music and voice. Each chapter is inspired by an artist-scientist pair who were approximate contemporaries. The chapters are held together by multiple themes. For example, one narrative thread is based on the Greek god Hermes. In addition to a free-improv soundtrack created by internationally known composer and musician Thollem Electric, there is a voice-over recounting a biography based on jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman.
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