project credits
Anne Wilson, Errant Behaviors, 2004
Composer: Shawn Decker
Animator: Cat Solen
Post-production Animator and Mastering: Daniel Torrente
Copyright 2004 Anne Wilson
Catalogue
With special thanks for their contributions to this project: Maggie Magee at Superior Street/Chicago, David Blum, Erin Sarofsky, Mark Anderson at the Department of Art and Technology Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and dear friends.
project statement
Errant Behaviors is a video and sound installation which emerged from Topologies, Wilson’s sculpture first shown in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. The idea of working with moving images came directly from Topologies — projections of sci-fi scenarios, odd cityscapes, and futuristic worlds. In Errant Behaviors, the latent associations and meanings of Topologies are emphasized, enlivened, and acted out.
Errant Behaviors was created for the exhibition Perspectives 140: Anne Wilson at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (January – April, 2004). This first installation was comprised of two 8.5′ wide DVD projections on opposing walls of a 24′ square gallery, and two stereo soundtracks. Although there are always two image/sound projections playing concurrently, each subsequent exhibition site afforded new installation possibilities from 2, 12′ wide screens at Art Miami Basel and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, to 2, 10′ rear projected screens at Indiana University.
Each of the 12 image/sound animation segments in DVD1 was conceived to play in relationship to the 11 image/sound animation segments in DVD2. Because the play order is shuffled and there is no beginning or end, ongoing improvisational relationships are created.
The frame-by-frame hand construction of animation is very much like the structural development of lace – a structure that accumulates part by part over time through sequences of motions with the potential to replicate and expand infinitely. The hand processing of both the animation and the textile displays aspects of foible, imperfection, curiosity, and irregularly.
There are relationships between humor and darker aspects to the content in Errant Behaviors, evolving ideas about quirky growth, sometimes playful and sometimes sinister-seeming relationships, rude actions, repetitions and accumulations. The behaviors of Errant Behaviors have to do with aspects of impropriety, aggression and accident.
Shawn Decker’s sound compositions utilize both processed recorded and found sounds to create environments of sonic activity which mirror the behavior of the visual images. The sound in some segments has a singular presence; other segments have a more cinematic presentation; some employ partially synchronized sound within a sonic environment. There is consideration throughout of the relationships between natural, human, and synthetic rhythms.
exhibition history
2004
“Perspectives 140: Anne Wilson,” Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
“Anne Wilson: Errant Behaviors,” (Project Space) Art Chicago, Chicago
“Anne Wilson: Errant Behaviors,” OmniArt in conjunction with Art Basel Miami
2005
“Anne Wilson: Errant Behaviors,” Indiana University School of Fine Arts Gallery, Bloomington, IN
2005/06
“Alternative Paradise,” 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
2007
“Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting,” Museum of Arts and Design, New York
“Worst of all / not to die in summer,” Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Germany
“Connections: Experimental Design,” Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
“Hot House,” Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI
2007/08
“Out of the Ordinary,” Victoria & Albert Museum, London
2008
“Anne Wilson: Errant Behaviors,” Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
“Marking Time,” International Drawing Research Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
2009
“Shift – Field of Fluctuation,” 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
“Yield,” Schmidt Contemporary Art, St Louis, MO
2010
“Material Evidence,” Beach Museum of Art, Manhatten, KS
2017
“Coded Threads: Textile and Technology,” Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
2020
“Ars Electronica Festival for Art, Technology & Society, In Kepler’s Gardens”
A global journey mapping the ‘new’ world across a network of 120 locations worldwide.
Included is a translation of “Errant Behaviors” for online viewing.
https://disposition.ats.community/errant_behaviors/
Disposition exhibition website (https://disposition.ats.community/)
