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About Kevin

Baltimore City
  Kevin Blackistone is a Baltimore inter-media artist exploring interactive immersive environments. Using backgrounds in video, music, animation, coding and data analysis he currently explores hierarchy, correlation, complexity and  control in the context of social, scientific and political dynamics. He works as a reaction to the adversarial uses of technology on the corporate, governmental and personal levels including effects on privacy, policing and advertising; further exploring the ways it… more
View Kevin's Resume
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Whos Watching

  An exploration of the apparatus of surveillance and the ways in which Baltimore's disenfranchised communities have been a testing ground of these new technologies through intentional obfuscation and minimal public oversight. ‘Who's Watching’ exists to introduce a conversation about these methods and their use.

Details
  Participants at two sites are encompassed by video and audio of those in the other while submitting themselves to monitoring including audio, data and face cataloguing.
  A video feed between the two sites is captured by a panoramic infrared security camera and sent to projectors, providing a full dome coverage. This feed is periodically interrupted with local imagery and a panoptic view of FBI drone footage secretly collected during the Baltimore Uprising.

Materials: wood, metal, fabric, cameras, mirrors, microphones, speakers, networking devices,  processing computers, projection
2018
  • Touch Camera Control
    Touch Camera Control
    This touchscreen allows participants to pan and zoom the camera feed, giving a sense of being in control of the monitoring aparatus, meanwhile the above camera is set to recognize and catalogue the participants face.
  • Gallery Install in Profile
    Gallery Install in Profile
    a participant in the one room is projected across the walls of another with overlaid data feed of current network traffic
  • Drone Footage
    Drone Footage
    panopticon of FBI drone surveillance of the Baltimore Uprising provides a momentary mosaic
  • Interaction
    Interaction
    participants at one site interact with those at a distance
  • Face Catalogue Screen
    Face Catalogue Screen
    View of the screen displaying a rotating and updating catalogue of the faces of individuals who used the control screen with an additional audio analysis display.
  • Exterior View
    Exterior View
    When set-up in an interior space, the weather-proof covering can be removed allowing those exterior to the installation a further opportunity to participate as voyeur.
  • Who's Watching - a security aparatus
    The ways in which Baltimore has been a test-bed of security technologies is explored by participants in two locations who take part as both viewer and subject, while submitted to multiple forms of personal data collection.
    •

    • Spectral Lines

    Planetarium format abstract exploration of the ideas that surround the search for exoplanets featuring live music by Wume and animations produced using generative, data driven & 3d elements.

    Details
    Spectral Line is a four part, one hour performance and video piece designed in full-dome format first presented in April 2017 at Baltimore's  Davis Planetarium. The complete piece explores and abstracts ideas related to the search for and data collected from extrasolar planets. In each section an individual confirmed planet was selected and animations developed and assembled based on it's means of discovery and known characteristics.

    2017
    • 2nd Movement Still
      2nd Movement Still
      Orbit | Influence
    • 1st Movement Still
      1st Movement Still
      signal | noise | lensing
    • 3rd Movement Still
      3rd Movement Still
      fractalean geometry | geological evolution
    • 4th Movement
      4th Movement
      fluctuation | oscillation
    • 2nd Movement Still
      2nd Movement Still
      gravitation | doplar
    • Spectral Lines
      A one hour immersive piece presented in the Davis Planetarium featuring abstract animations influenced by and using data sets from exoplanetary research. Featuring live musical performance by Wume.
    •

    • Intersections

    Overlapping lives and scenes from different times and places.
    Six videos show scenes from Baltimore and Mexico City darting at random intervals - separating and layering in turn.

    Details:
    A projection of six video tiles is broken into sections by an array of programmatically controlled servo motors. These are set to move each image to a new position at randomized intervals. On certain occasions all six videos are set move to the same location creating a wash of all six videos.

    Materials: Controller boards, acrylic, mirrors, motors, projection
    2018
    • Intersections
      An exploration of how structures and people in different locations can intersect. Six videos of scenes from Baltimore and Mexico City dart around, overlapping and diverging in turn.
    • Still View from behind mirrors & controller
      Still View from behind mirrors & controller
    • Build & Tech
      Build & Tech
      Rear view showing the motors, controller, wiring, and acrylic support elements.
    • Development
      Development
      Development image of mounting and control motor build
    •

    • Flatland [video projection design & animation]

    Based on the novela by Edwin A. Abbot, this performance explores concepts of hierarchy, colonialism and control through ever-higher dimensional space. Here, I've design immersive live and reactive projections which cover both the audience and performers who's stage is likewise a projection surface.

    Details:
    Visuals were created based on scientific and mathematical models of two to six dimensional forms, quantum mechanics and string theory. These concepts were further modified to explore ideas of life and movement of higher dimensional beings and their levels of control in these abstract spaces. The original novela is expanded from the lives of a two dimensional being discovering three dimensional space to an expansive ten dimensional abstract universe.

    Directors: Isa Leal & Evan Moritz • Music: Nudie Suits • Lighting: Mason Ross • Costumes: Susan MacCorkle
    Full Performance [1h 44m]: https://youtu.be/ZtMeVySNnW8

    2016

    • Scenes from Flatland
      Excerpts from the production based on the popular novela.
    • 2D Village
      2D Village
      Five dimensional 'Judges' move before a view of the lives of the Flatlanders
    • Court
      Court
      sixth dimensional 'court'
    • 3rd Dimensional 'Prison'
      3rd Dimensional 'Prison'
      a flowing lattice based on granular quantum principals represents a three dimensional 'prison'
    • Travel through Dimensions
      Travel through Dimensions
      travels through dimensions accelerate
    • Flatland Teaser
      promotional teaser video of pre-projection clips - Music: Nudie Suits
    •

    • Digital Cascade

    Translucent projections upon a shower door  provide a parable of what physical privacy and mental freedom mean when awash in a constant information flow - providing data to us, while collecting from our every interaction.

    Details
    Through a glass shower door is projected translucent imagery of showering individuals and trickling water.  These images are distorted and discolored in a manner reminiscent of analog late-night pay-per-view scrambling. A speaker within a showerhead provides an ambient soundtrack of showerwater to simulate exposure from within the shower while acting as voyeur.

    Materials: Door, projection film, ceramic tile, showerhead, speaker, projection
    2018
    • Distorted Form
      Distorted Form
      A still of a naked showing body, distorted with clear water drops
    • Showerhead on Tile
      Showerhead on Tile
      The shower head contains a speaker and, with the tile floor, aids in establishing the environment
    • Still Detail
      Still Detail
      Female nude showing with analog distortions.
    • Digital Cascade [demo]
      An exploration of privacy when awash in the digital information flow, delivering information at a moments notice, while selectively collecting the lives of those who interact with it.
    •

    • Persistence of Vision

    An audience is surrounded by their own mirror image as it reacts to the sounds produced by themselves and performers.

    Details
    A companion piece to Who's Watching, Persistence of Vision follows in it's critique of unregulated surveillance through analogues with the wide-field arial program flown over Baltimore by Persistant Surveillance Systems.
    Four screens form a canopy of projection beamed from a central podium. These show a feed of video from a flown central security camera which is manipulated to form a reflected image of those below while being algorithmically mangled by the sounds of the audience and  performers in the room.

    Materials: Custom screens, security camera, processing computer, haze,  projection
    2018
    • Persistance of Vision
      Clips from installation with performance
    • View from behind performer
      View from behind performer
      View from behind performer
    • Four Screens
      Four Screens
      A view of all screens
    •

    • Urban Fragments

    Shifting views of urban decay. Prismatic crystalline shards glow through a discarded storefront window.

    Details
    Urban Fragments takes a piece of dirty and cigar-burned window from downtown Baltimore and uses it's grime as a projection surface. Upon this, generative animation of pseudo-glass fragments are projected as they oscillate between irridescent color and monochromatic palettes. Configurable as both a floor or hanging piece.

    Materials: Reclaimed plexi, wood, wire, projection
    2018
    • Hanging
      Hanging
      Installation in hanging configuration
    • Floor
      Floor
      Floor configuration
    • Urban Fragments
    •

    • Topologies

    Curved lines morph and deform providing three dimensional cross-sections of hidden structure with implications of the interiors of organic bodies.

    Details:
    Procedurally generated lines move vertically and horizontally through a tulle mesh highlighting it's bundled manifold geometry and providing a window into the unseen cross-sections of organic systems and structures.

    Materials: Tulle, projection
    2018
    • Still
      Still
    • Topologies
      Video of setup and motion of installation
    •