If you’ve been following along on my YouTube channel you may have picked up on a few clips of a recent project of mine involving a gigantic pile of old TVs.

The purpose of the installation was to explore Marshall McLuhan‘s theory, “the medium is the message.” A group at the University of Alberta is developing a larger interactive installation entitled “WAVE” to be setup at the Faculty of Extension in celebration of the 100th anniversary of McLuhan’s birth. Our TV Wall was setup, with guidance from the WAVE Group, at a reception to raise awareness about the project.

So what is it exactly? The setup consists of 11 Television from 1960s onward that are tuned to play different channels. In one corner of the room we had an antenna connected to a high-end RF Modulator capable of outputting 3 different video sources on any channel. These three sources were from DVD players all at a different point on a media disc. In short, we setup a trio of our own TV Stations in the lobby of the Art Gallery of Alberta, and the results were pretty spectacular! Most of the TVs were from Kevin‘s personal collection, along with the VHS Reporter Video Camera that was feeding a few of the screens, and a few of them were acquired from a few Facebook call-outs and dumpster diving.

Embedded is a video of the final setup, and clips from its development are available here and here.