Three New Lives for Electric Chair (TNLEC) (2015) A series of formal games, in which competing layers of abstraction are presented via text in the guise of an entertainment system, healing device, or new music composition. In TNLEC the history of the electric chair as well as its role in entertainment (public execution), electricity in medicine (Albert Abrams, Wilhelm Reich, utopian devices, et al.), and the history of early electronic/process music were all utilized to structurally manipulate entryways into the work and processing relations to the otherwise neutral formal abstractions produced by the viewer. The only universal text was the waiver which had to be signed to be given entrance into TNLEC.
Within the space were three electric chairs (amplified), an enactor wand (user-controlled electrocution device), inducer prism (user automated electrocution device), and a microphone placed in front of the chairs connected to a videographics processor which was projected āpersonalizedā abstractions claimed by the viewer by signature of the work via the Waiver. These abstractions regardless of the philosophy of the text and/or and intent by user were repeating patterns with little to no variation. With primary signification through the role of the mark as signature as indoctrination to the structure/fabrication of trust between the operator, and chairs.
To further this artificial empowerment and trust by utilizing natural forces and language, an āeasy listeningā album was created including a special enhanced single version of the sessions, for maximum readings into the given text and subliminal readings by the user.