Jennifer Zaylea
Artist & Educator
WonderWalk
Sonic Work
2020
WonderWalk is an immersive sonic experience of the culture informing America, both in its development and in its undoing, ultimately casting aside all reason.
Ideally you will listen to this work with headphones as you walk through familiar surroundings. The surroundings will impart that location's experiences within the way you experience this sound piece.
2020 University Film and Video Association, New Media Award, 2nd place juried award.
Wall Of My Own
Interactive Video Installation
Harvestworks
New York City, NY
2020
Wall Of My Own is an intertactive audio/visual work that asks the viewer seemingly mundane questions and, based upon the response, the computer will either continue building the wall or will begin breaking the wall down to reveal the beauty being hidden by the wall.
This piece was created during a residency at Harvestworks, where it was also presented, via the Kinect motion tracking hardware.
This is I
Interactive Video Installation
2019
This Is I is a projection mapped interactive video installation that questions how we view ourselves and our beliefs in a public forum.
Do we see ourselves as different from or the same as those we surround ourselves with? This question is being asked while simultaneously altering your view/sound of yourself (the viewer) as you see a distorted reflection of yourself projected into an architectural space that also speaks to this self perceived image. Are we all immigrants? -- Are we all the exact same? -- When do we determine what difference is? -- Who has that right to proclaim such a category? Age old question using new forms of media to implicate each of us in this system of categorization.
As the viewer approaches the "i" sculpture, the mapped image of themselves is altered and suddenly is locked behind bars. This is my way of bringing into a more personal focus the nature of who is considered "someone who should be in jail."
Deconstruct to Reconstruct
Augmented Reality Work
Kimmel Center
Philadelphia, PA
2018
Deconstruct To Reconstruct is an augmented reality project questioning the framework of story; creating openings for personal exploration through the fragmenting of composition and emergence of text.
The work is comprised of five hand drawn experimental scores, animated and added to with sound design and text. The video included here is a short demonstration of the work in a gallery setting.
This work is included in the SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community.
Language: As You Hear It
Interactive Audio/Video Installation
2016
Language: As You Hear It is an interactive video and sound project that works with the Processing IDE and Leap Motion Controller technology.
This project reflects the auditory and visual feeling of being "other" - hidden in shadows in this case - and having one's own story obscured by that which casts a shadow. Often, as media shows, an event of significant meaning can be consumed and re-purposed for political means. This leaves the reality of the original event out of time, out of context and with diminished meaning. This project encourages the viewer to enjoy being caught up in the moments where language is not comprehensible and primitive senses allow viewers to live in the moment that is most true for them.
"What secret is at stake when one truly listens, that is, when one tries to capture or surprise the sonority rather than the message?" - Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening
2016 University Film and Video Association, New Media Award, 3rd place juried competition.
Enter-Act
Interactive Audio Sculpture Installation
2016
Enter-Act is an interactive multimedia installation. This piece represents the idea of chance, as famously encouraged by John Cage, within an interactive experimental "jazz" ensemble in which the performers are the micro-controllers & audience members.
The work consists of micro-controllers housed within sculptural pieces that also act as interfaces for the audience to interact with the work. Audio is of a more experimental nature and, as such, will not require the audience to have musical training. Instead, the audience will become part of the ensemble as they interact with the sculptural pieces which result in a mutation of the audio.
I like to think of this as Cage, In Four Parts:
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Field recordings
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Experimental graphic notation compositions
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Micro-controllers communicating with each other
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Micro-controllers communicating with audience
Exhibition Spring 2016: President's Gallery, The University of the Arts.
Sound Lettering
Interactive New Media Installation
2015
Stop motion animation playing in the small LCD screen on the back side of the letter V. The audio is included in the video but the installation piece plays the audio seperately through headphones on each of the flat lying letters.
Sound Lettering is a project that works with interactive audio & video elements, housed within a 3D form, to tell a story that shifts according to the audience member's navigation of the space and inquisitiveness of the forms.
3D objects situated in the gallery space that have built-in audio & video technology triggered by motion and sound sensors.
The audience member navigates through the space filled with 3D letters staggered on the floor. Audio & video will accompany 3D objects (the screens and speakers will be housed within each of the flat lying 3D letters).
Audience member navigation and curiosity will determine the meaning of the lettering and will trigger common themes through the created sound and visual elements (echoes and memories). The animation, unknown to the viewer, mimics the physical action of the audience member and reinforces the activity of the phrase.
The Social Study
Experimental Video for Public Installation
Featured in "The Window Project"
Digital Arts & Entertainment Laboratory
Atlanta, GA.
2012
Six window projection, with sound playing via transducers attached to the window panes, in public venue of DAEL: Georgia State University.
A Social Study is an experimental work used to investigate the interaction of a broad audience with story through animating imagery and sound in a public venue. The imagery and sound both contain elements of a traditional story structure that has been dismantled by flawed (glitch) technologies. The question at large is one of asking about the ability of story to reclaim the space through its broken nature. Allowing for open ended entries and exits. Accessible to everyone and no one all at once.
Altering The Subtext
Documentation of an Interactive New Media Installation
Eyedrum Gallery
Atlanta, GA.
2011
Altering The Subtext aims to accentuate the exceptionally charged space of social interaction and to bring the queered experience of such activities - both past and present - to the foreground of daily experience in an intimate way.
The work accomplishes this by withholding conventional audio/visual reference points, encouraging the listener/viewer to actively participate in the interruption of singularity. The interruption allows for a diffusion of personal boarders, encouraging storytelling while developing a broader and more diverse body of interpretations.
Games: A Symphony Of Play
Experential Sound Installation
Herbst Pavillion, Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, CA.
2008
This is a single sound work from a compilation design for this piece.
Isolation booth - custom modular design for exhibition of sound work.
Each work on this compilation consists of manipulated field recordings made from childhood toys. The work is about taking something that has a familiar sound, which evokes a memory associated with that sound, and then re-contextulizing the sound based on the time and place it is currently being experienced in.
Impart (room 1)
Robert Else Gallery
Sacramento, CA.
2006
Three poured wax panels with text - flush mounted and lit from behind - installed in custom built wall.
"These are the words I have whispered."
Close up of the wax sculpture installed in eyepiece of wall.
Three poured wax panels with text - flush mounted and lit from behind - installed in custom built wall.
Impart (room 2)
Robert Else Gallery
Sacramento, CA.
2006
Room filled with hand braided & dyed twine, drapery for false ceiling, and hand tied thread.
Room filled with hand braided & dyed twine, drapery for false ceiling, and hand tied thread.
Tight Then Breathe
Installation Gallery, CSUS
Sacramento, CA.
2005
Entrance to "corset".
Rounding the exterior of the "corset."
Close up of base where fine threads have been intentionally placed and sewn into the form and the opposing wall.
Entrance to "corset".
Tight Then Breathe consists of a self supporting spiraling wall that wraps itself into a "corset" form made from tissue paper infused with ink, thread, braided twine and polyurathane.
The work recreates the sensation of walking towards a claustrophoboic (thightening) space but also knowing that as the breath shortens it also expands when serenity of knowing one is being sheltered.
View from standing position - looking down through hole in gallery floor.
View from sitting position - looking down through hole in gallery floor.
Close up of materials. Handmade braids wrapped with thin cotton embedded with handwritten quotes.
View from standing position - looking down through hole in gallery floor.
Whenever I Despair is a work that encourages viewer's to lower themselves to the ground in order to gain a better viewing position for the piece.
The piece reflects upon the uncomfort many people feel in public settings when performing an act that is socially frowned upon. Yet, as the viewer does lower to the floor, they might experience a fleeting moment of despair and thus want to lower even further into the warmth of the wax filled portal. The closer they are to the piece, the better able they are to see that the cords are hand wrapped with linen paper that has been written on in repetition the statement "Whenever I Despair."
Whenever I Despair
EyeDrum Gallery
Sacramento, CA.
2005