WORKING NOTES

Private materials for potential collaborators.

THE UNFIXED LENS

The Unfixed Lens is a temporary, site-responsive installation currently being developed for the East End of Long Island.

These notes share aspects of the work that are intentionally absent from the public site.

The pop-up is intended for a Main Street setting or another area of everyday commerce on the East End of Long Island. The interest is in a space people may encounter while moving through an ordinary day of shopping, work, or leisure. A specific site has not yet been selected.

PLACEMENT

The Unfixed Lens is intended to appear temporarily within an area of ordinary commerce rather than within a traditional art space.

The placement is part of the work.

The installation does not withdraw into a separate, art-centered space. It is placed directly within an environment where attention, scarcity, desirability, status, visibility, and consumption are already operating.

And within that environment, it offers something unusual:

Nothing to buy.
Nothing to acquire.
No particular conclusion to reach.

People may encounter it while shopping, working, eating, walking somewhere else, or simply passing by.

For a few minutes, the usual transaction is absent.

ACCESS & INVITATION

The intention is to make the encounter highly accessible: brief, free to enter, and open to people who may not seek out an art space. No prior knowledge or particular way of responding is expected. Physical access and the option to sit or stand are part of choosing and arranging the space.

Placed within everyday commerce, the pop-up may bring together people who would otherwise pass one another without sharing a moment. Its presence can draw attention and curiosity, allowing people to choose to step inside and experience the work together.

The experience is free and donation-based. Nothing is for sale. Any donation is an optional contribution for the experience, with no required payment and no difference in access for those who do not donate.

Within a setting where attention is often directed toward buying, consuming, or being seen, the work offers a pause with nothing to purchase or prove. The encounter does not need to lead to a transaction. There is nothing to buy, including the glass sphere. A donation is simply a voluntary response to the experience.

THE NARRATION

“We find ourselves here…
in this place…
at this moment…
breathing this air…
together.

Each of us arriving…
through an infinite series
of circumstances…
choices…
and conditions.
Some seen.
Some unseen.

Whether it is a stranger
we momentarily share
a space with…

…or someone
we share a lifetime with…
the unseen threads
that connect us…
known in Korean culture as…
In Yun.

As a species…
we observe.
We notice.
We attend.

Some things…
capture our attention.
Others…
quietly fade.

As we move through the world…
through time…
through inherited systems…
we make meaning.

About ourselves.
About others.
About what belongs.
About what matters.

We take on roles…
We tell stories…

Yet beneath them…
there remains something unchanged.

Every life…
begins…
and is sustained by…

air.
water.
one another.

What captures our attention…
often shapes…
our experience.

What quietly fades…
often…
connects us most.

What remains invisible…
is the lens…
through which we perceive.

So familiar…
so ever-present…
that we rarely notice…
it is there.

The moment we become aware…
that there is a lens…
it is no longer fixed.”

THE VISUAL INQUIRY

The visual component remains intentionally unresolved.

Moving image, aerial imagery and still photography may move between distance and intimacy—sometimes observing people within a larger landscape and sometimes coming close enough to encounter an individual.

There are potential access points to people whose lives intersect with water in different ways—through work, fishing, surfing, family and everyday life. These are possibilities rather than predetermined subjects.

Some initial images have begun to emerge alongside the narration, but they are not intended as a prescribed shot list.

The images do not need to illustrate the narration.

I am interested in what another observer sees after encountering the work.

THE EXPERIENCE

The whole encounter is intended to take approximately five minutes, allowing time to enter, settle, experience the work, and leave.

The visual field begins extremely close to the surface of the ocean. The image is inverted from the beginning, although at this proximity there is little information with which to orient the image.

Moving image and photography emerge within the ocean field and recede again.

Mirrors within the space gradually bring the observer into what is being observed.

As the work approaches its end, the visual field slowly widens.

The horizon—and the skyline beyond it—become visible only at the end.

What has been present from the beginning can finally be recognized differently.

The narration stops.

The observer is left with the image, the room, and their own reflection.

A small glass sphere is available upon leaving. Looking through it physically inverts the world once again.

THE ROOM & MATERIALS

The working setup is a temporary, phone-free space with a simple arrangement of stools, mirrors, an ocean visual field, and sound. The room is adapted to the site rather than reproduced as a fixed set.

Observers enter, put their phones aside, and settle on a stool or remain standing. Mirrors are positioned so that their reflections gradually become part of what they observe. The arrangement leaves room to enter and leave without directing everyone toward one prescribed view.

The ocean imagery is presented through a projection or screen, with the final display configuration determined by the space. Narration, music, crystal-bowl sound, and quiet ambient ocean audio form the sound component.

Working materials include stools, mirrors and stable supports, a projector or screen with playback equipment, speakers, and small glass spheres placed near the exit. Lighting, placement, and the amount of equipment remain responsive to the room.

A glass sphere is given freely to each observer on leaving, whether or not they donate. It extends the invitation to take another look beyond the room.

COLLABORATION

Exploring Re:Vision is currently independently developed and self-funded.

There is no funded photography or moving-image commission attached to The Unfixed Lens. The interest is in whether another artist finds enough genuine overlap with their own practice to explore part of the visual work collaboratively.

The larger inquiry and installation are already in development. The visual response remains open.

Selected work would exist primarily within The Unfixed Lens while the installation is active rather than being broadly released as online content.

The installation itself is not being developed as a vehicle for selling the photographs or moving images.

A collaborating artist would retain authorship and ownership of their original work and be fully credited.

Questions around exhibition use, future release, prints or sales, potential revenue, and the life of the work beyond the installation would be decided together before moving forward.

There is no expectation that encountering these notes leads to collaboration.

The first invitation is simply to look.