Fence Sitters

Fence Sitters is an installation built specifically for the Victoria Room, a gallery located in the heart of San Francisco's Wine District. In it, a set of contact microphones and audio speakers are placed on the inside of the large frosted windows at the front of the gallery. The microphones pick up sounds both in and outside of the gallery, and these sounds are amplified through the speakers. As the microphones produce a very specialized and somewhat oblique signal, the acoustic image they provide matches the translucence and opacity of the visual image of the windows themselves. The piece mirrors the somewhat uneasy relationship between the gallery and the local population by serving as a surveillance system that both obscures more than it reveals and offers better listening to those inside the gallery than out.

Installation views at the Victoria Room, San Francisco (January, 1995). Mixed media, custom electronics, sound. Dimensions variable.