Step and Repeat: Pittsburgh Cycle

Site/Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Project Type: Generative Art, Networked Media, Video Installation, Soundscapes

A live audio and video based piece using networked media. Based on digital “step and repeat” cycles: a loose metaphor, the Pittsburgh iteration uses video and audio samples recorded in Pittsburgh, PA, and the surrounding western Pennsylvania area –with touch points including Primanti’s, the Strip, the Southside, East Liberty, the Northside, Beaver Falls, Jones & McLaughlin, the Monongahela Incline and Pittsburgh’s three rivers.Divided into into six primary segments and a seventh segment including material contributed by viewers to be filtered through a digital randomizer, step and repeat: Pittsburgh cycle maps entrance into an urban environment via incline railway, transit through the city, reflections of the community’s industrial past, particularly steel, and the transformation of city and countryside as the industrial economic base shifts and nature again takes hold of old worksites. In the last two segments the viewer leaves the city, again on incline railway, and watches as the evening paints the city as a visually appealing study of water and reflection.

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Video Stills from Space Gallery Installation in Pittsburgh, PA

Dynamic Cycle Set Rotation:

Set 1: You Are Here: Latitude 40.45726 Longitude -79.973499 (approx: 5 min)

Set 2: Incline Down (approx: 5 min 30 sec)

Set 3: Steel Cycle Remix (approx: 5 min 30 sec)

Set 4: Cityscapes Cycle Remix (approx: 5 min 30 sec)
Set 5: Uploads Cycle Remix (approx: 5 min 30 sec)
Set 6: Dam Cycle Remix (approx: 5 min 30 sec)
Set 7: Incline Up (approx: 5 min 30 sec)
Set 8: Nightfall Cycle Remix (approx: 4 min 40 sec)

Sound Remix by Robert Dansby

Extra special thanks and video/photo/content credits to Kary Arimoto Mercer & Rick Mercer for putting us up (and putting up with us) in the Steel City.

 

Concept and Development:

With a nod toward Allen Sekula’s work: specifically “Fish Story.” This piece chronicles (in a documentary fashion) the ironies, displacements, shifting values, economies and systems: the transformation of an American city as an industrial and economic center shifting from steel to telecom, and the reclamation of areas of the city and countryside dedicated to old economies/technology by both nature and the population at large – a population with new needs but retaining a core identity.

The Step + Repeat Series are audio and video based site specific installations, projections, performances, and soundscape projects. The visualizations and sonifications are unique sequences made using a range of performance based software in which the content and documents (digital photographs, video and audio) are fed live and manipulated in real-time.

 

Vimeo: Video Archive of 1:30 hours of Recorded Step and Repeat Output (Randomized Sequences)

Vimeo Media Link

Archived Media @ Penn State