Electric Feel

Artist Ashley John Pigford gives obsolete technology new life.

by Holly Otterbein

Ashley John Pigford OBSCURE CAMERA: Ashley John Pigford took this photo, Venice, Italy, with an old $20 Holga.

[ visual art/installation ]

Ashley John Pigford picks up a disassembled tape recorder and stares at it lovingly. Like a see-through phone from the '90s, it looks naked and mysterious, with more wheels, motors and screws than you had imagined there'd be. "Isn't there something beautiful about this?" he asks, as if anyone could appreciate it. "When you take the covers off things, they still work, you know."

We're in Pigford's Delaware studio, a glorified garage that's covered with technological artifacts from the past — a projector, 30 or so light switches, pulled-apart hard drives, an analog TV set from the '70s, six old Macs stacked next to each other. He amassed most of these materials for free, usually from other people's trash. He ambles over to a boxy, slate gray TV. "I love this thing. They called it the Admiral!" he says, switching it on. Black and white static fills the screen, and a familiar, irritating buzz follows. "There are no stations anymore, so it's totally poltergeist when you turn it on. These analog sets are especially interesting because of the switch to digital. I still haven't figured out what to do with it, though."

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Figuring out what to do with these machines, as well as a teaching gig at the University of Delaware, is Pigford's life work — a far cry from what he was doing six years ago.

As co-founder of Meat and Potatoes, a graphic design company in Los Angeles, Pigford often found himself in strange situations. "I did a photo shoot [for] Sammy Hagar for his new tequila, Cabo Wabo, on a private villa in California once," he says. "It was ... weird. And crazy." Somehow, though, working with the Van Halen singer wasn't what made Pigford realize it was time to go back home.

"I like the mind-set of calling a spade a spade," he says. "And that's a very East Coast thing to do. I lived in Philly for so long, that's just what we do there."

So, in 2003, he left his job at a hip, lucrative graphic design company to make fine art. Weird fine art — the kind that buzzes and moves and asks you to touch it. "Art shouldn't just be something you look at," he says. "It's something you experience. It's an interface."

This theory — that art shouldn't merely be studied but played with, prodded and maybe even ruined — is something Pigford takes very seriously. Whether it's photography, installation or typographic design, he rigs his pieces to be interactive, using methods that often seem more apt for a science project than artwork.

Take the Bright Type Installation, the first piece of this kind he ever created, which was displayed at the University of Delaware Museum in 2007 and now lives in the back of his studio. It consists of a keyboard that rests on top of a 3-foot black column, with a light box hanging above. You are, of course, supposed to touch it. I begin to type out "hi," but before I get to the second letter, I'm assaulted with a 3-foot capital "H" — lit up with 35-watt halogen lightbulbs — shining in my eyes. I shriek. "Isn't that funny?" he asks. "That piece garnered the biggest compliment I've ever gotten. Someone said that their child loved it. That's exactly what I'm going for — that playful element."

Pigford has made dozens of other whimsical, electronic works like this, which have been exhibited everywhere from the London College of Communication to Texas' Sound Experimental Film Festival to the Crane Arts Building here in Philly. There's his If I was an activist... , in which he asked his friends the question, "If you were an activist, what would you be an activist about?" and then plugged the answers into digital clock radios. There's the electronic cover of Synchronisms No. 12, a classical music piece, which he performed with clarinetist Marianne Gythfeldt. There's P'unk Avenue Active Intersection, an installation that recorded visual data from Passyunk Avenue and Federal Street and translated it into sound using Max/MSP software, and a similar piece called Sound of Sight that's currently up at the International House. (He'll be teaching Max/MSP at the Hacktory this fall.)

But not every gallery is biting. "Thankfully, Philly has some experimental venues that are willing to take a chance and exhibit art that plugs in," he says. "But a lot of people don't because, for one, there's a safety issue, and two, it's not for sale. I'm not making commodities."

I suggest that someone may want to decorate his living room with the Bright Type Installation, so why not sell it?

"I'd love to, but I'd have no idea how to price it," he says. "Plus, I'd have to include a maintenance contract! These things fall apart."

And then? "I guess the contract would say I'd make it into something else."

(holly.otterbein@citypaper.net)

Sound of Sight | through July 31, free, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, ihousephilly.org.