Imagine, I Am! is the result of research of the historical intersections of mediumistic practice and the techniques of audio and visual recording, exploring the private ways in which we use technology to commune with our dead. The degradation of analog media corresponds with the soft decay of human memory over time, whilst digital media is immutable and offers infinite recall and endless repeat, until a deliberate deletion or mechanical failure leads to complete and permanent erasure. The electronic devices and the organic technology of individual memory through which we memorialize our dead merge in a gestalt manifestation of collective loss.

Inspired by the life and work of Konstantin Raudive, this installation evokes the sonic aesthetic of the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) and the visual aesthetic of ITC (Instrumental Transcommunication), both paranormal means of communication with the dead. Rather than seeking messages ‘from the other side’ in the noise of analog media, I sought to create ‘reverse EVP’ by obliterating found footage of home movies on VHS, subjecting it to repeated reproduction from tape to tape. All sound and visuals in the final work were sourced from this degraded footage. It occurred to me while researching Raudive’s archive at the British Library that he was a lonely old man who had lost most of his family and friends to time, and what interested me most about EVP was not the paranormal aspect, but how we process loss through technology. All of the recordings we make of ourselves and our loved ones are destined to become messages from the dead, in time.

A web of speakers emerging from the wall of the gallery creates a curtain of sonic white noise, through which we hear breakthrough messages, snippets of dialog from various home movie tapes that suggest the cryptic, curtailed speech of archived EVP recordings. Two large monitors at a right angle to one another in the corner of the gallery present the same images (with a very slight delay) referencing the black mirror used for scrying, the divination practice that prefigures EVP. Faded images of human forms are accompanied by a collage of warped musical sounds, distorted by the wow-and-flutter of old tape and degraded through a process of multiple copies of copies.

Media Installation with sound, video and objects. Commissioned by the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw GA for Medium exhibition, 2017.