Picture Windows (1990)

This installation was a collaboration with Mickey McGowan and was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for the show Bay Area Media, March 15-May 13, 1990. The drawings represent different stages of thinking about the specific installation at SFMOMA. Picture Windows was purchased for the collection by Zentrum für Kunst und Mediatechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany, and was exhibited there in May, 1991, in a slightly different form.

I carry a pocket sketch pad with me when I travel, and these four pages (#1) reflect my thinking about Picture Windows while I was traveling in Yugoslavia in November, 1989. They include a sketch of how the "dollhouse" would be fabricated, how the window video would be shot through venetian blinds, as well as an idea that was later scrapped—to let the house float above its podium. Shooting the video channels involved a lot of improvisation between Mickey and me, but some scenes were pre-visualized. There is one such image among these sketches—"telephone"—but it was not used in the final version.

I did an early presentation drawing, not included here, before we learned that the gallery was octagonal. We envisioned the house as a walk-around sculpture with multiple video windows.

Drawing #2 (dated 2/15/90) is a sketch for a presentation made to Media Arts curator Bob Riley, and depicts details of how the piece would be installed at SFMOMA, on a ziggurat made of TVs and a white picket fence. This was simplified for the final installation, but the octagonal gallery had already been selected for the show at this point. The final decision, to put the house against the back wall creating a more frontal presentation, is shown in the upper right hand sketch.