Jim Campbell

Light, 1988-91
Custom electronics.

-Interaction through both digital and analogue means
-Undermines the notion of the 'live' image.
-What are the aesthetic implications of the live image?

For a sense of how the practice of art is changing at the dawn of the 21st century, you need look no further than Jim Campbell. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, Campbell has virtually no formal training as an artist. His art apprenticeship, if you can call it that, consisted of repairing video equipment and, later, designing integrated circuits for video here in Silicon Valley. The non-intuitive notion of Heisenberg's principle is that the universe is probabilistic. This means that not only are you unable to measure the position of the electron accurately, but that it does not exist accurately. That, I agree, is totally counter-intuitive. But at a time when many artists who want to create technologically based art seek a partner who knows the electronics and will leave the creativity to them, Campbell is a whole different thing -- a technocrat who discovered early on that he has an artist's soul. At the moment, Campbell's non-art-school vision of art is on exhibit on both coasts. In addition to having a solo show that just opened at the Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, he is one of a relative handful of artists from the Bay Area with work in the prestigious Whitney Biennial 2002 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. ''Up until about six years ago, I didn't even call myself an artist,'' says Campbell, 46, who still puts in one day a week at his job for Sage Inc., a company in Silicon Valley, designing integrated circuits. ''I always knew I wanted to do something with art. In the beginning it had to do with balance, the need to do something that was more poetic and less mathematical. I don't like to categorize myself.''

Shadow (For Heisenberg), 1993-94
Custom electronics, video camera, glass cube with LCD material, statue

Shadow (for Heisenberg) is an interactive installation that involves the viewer's desire to see an object contained within a glass cube. If the viewer moves towards the object the image of the object fades from view and is replaced by the shadow of the object. This work incorporates a new technology that allows a piece of glass to go from transparent to translucent. The work also incorporates a video camera on the ceiling. The image from the camera on the ceiling is manipulated and displayed on the wall behind the pedestal to make apparent the relationship between position and perception. This work is loosely based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle from Quantum Physics which states that one can never observe an object in its purest form because the process of observation has an impact on the object. The more accurately one trys to observe or measure an object, the more that object will be affected by the observation.

Memory/Recollection, 1990
Black and white video camera, five CRT's, 286 computer, custom electronics

Memory/Recollection is an interactive video installation in which a series of captured live frozen images are displayed on a series of monitors. The images fade from the first monitor to the last monitor so that the last monitor has the oldest image on it. The piece stores images for up to 2 years and at times displays these older images from 10 minutes, a week or six months ago. i.e. The piece keeps track of and is defined by its own history.