O Tannenbaum - Single channel installation, 2 mins 45 secs in loop DVD projection.

Single channel projection, 2 minutes, 45 seconds repeat loop, 2006.
Co-Collaboration with computer graphics interface designer Nick Keeble, researcher’s contribution 90%.

First screened publicly at the Oriel Mostyn Open 25/05/06-15/07/06.

O Tannenbaum is a single channel installation and the researcher’s first gallery installation. It returns to the subject of Ted Kaczynski the terrorist ‘Unabomber’ who formed the key point of reference in the researcher’s 2006 work Cabinet.

The immediate point of departure was a feature by Richard Barnes in LA Weekly (14/04/99) which described the terrorist’s house as significant because “it represents the dark side of idealism, which is fanaticism”. In O Tannenbaum, a computer model of a wooden cabin of the type that Kaczynski inhabited in Montana is repeatedly ‘felled’, mathematically exploded and reduced to timbers to the accompaniment of a 1907 recording of the traditional Christmas song. The cabin then rebuilds itself to perfection before one again dissembling.

This ‘perfect’ and ‘destroyed’ metaphor of Kaczynski’s idyllic domestic setting contrasting with the explosive damage he caused to others, is intended to provoke a questioning of idyllic isolation. Although Henry Thoreau’s Walden and John Muir ‘s campaigns to protect the Sierra Nevada Mountains were positive outcomes of contact with the outbacks and wilderness areas of North America, Kaczynski’s personal trajectory was much darker and had dire consequences for society, however noble his commitments to personal freedoms may have been. What he wrote in the woods was a treatise for freedom but also an incitation to violence.

O Tannenbaum was selected for the Oriel Mostyn Open at Llandudno. The exhibition received 700 entries from twelve countries from which 17 artists were invited to exhibit including the researcher.

Frames may be viewed on:

http://www.timshore.co.uk?otannenbaum.html

More details on: www.mostyn.org/home.php?/About_Us