I-Scapes 1.0

Guggenheim Virtual Museum I-Scapes Morph

A morphing video work enclosed as miniDV multiples in Plexiglas vitrines with Sony DV players and Adicom infrared timing sensors — edition of 10, held in the permanent collections of MoMA, SFMoMA, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and Het Nieuwe Instituut, as well as private collections worldwide.

The I-Scapes morphing video was installed on Sony DV players enclosed in Plexiglas vitrines with Adicom infrared timing sensors set to activate perpetually — a conceptual statement about presenting intangible digital art as a physical, collectible object. Derived from Asymptote’s 24 I-Scapes digital collages, the continuously evolving video sequence was among the earliest computer-aided morphing works, produced using Macromedia Pro. An edition of 10 multiples was produced.

Permanent Collections

The I-Scapes 1.0 multiples are now held in the permanent collections of major institutions as well as in private collections:

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York — View in MoMA Collection →
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) — View in SFMoMA Collection →
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
NAI (Het Nieuwe Instituut), Rotterdam — View in NAI Collection →

Exhibition History

The video, multiples, and related I-Scapes works were first presented together at Frederieke Taylor-TZ Art Gallery in SoHo, New York (1999), in the exhibition I-Scapes 1.0: Consumable Architectures for a Digital Culture. The gallery presented the full constellation: the 24 original collages as large-format Iris prints, the morphing video, the miniDV multiples in mirrored glass cubes, and the centerpiece — a large-scale, multi-screen installation projected into a mirrored plexiglass environment that transformed the gallery into an immersive digital space. Using flat LCD displays and one-way mirrored plexiglass, the installation created a reflective, layered environment in which the morphing video played across multiple surfaces simultaneously, multiplied by the mirrored surfaces into an infinite spatial field. The exhibition was prescient — predating the wave of video-immersive installations that would proliferate in galleries and museums years later.

Following the Frederieke Taylor show, the I-Scapes works were exhibited at the Julie Saul Gallery in New York (2000) and The Brooklyn Museum (2001), among numerous international exhibitions.

The MoMA multiple — a gift of Frederieke Taylor — was included in MoMA’s Building Collections: Recent Acquisitions of Architecture exhibition (November 2010 – May 2011) and later featured in the museum’s Applied Design exhibition (March 2013 – January 2014).