A new work in Eric McNeill's Reduction series, his video sculpture for Outside In consists of a series of large, suspended grids of green LEDs projecting low-resolution, abstracted video onto the surface of a wall. The video shows the gradual assembly and dispersal of a large crowd of people, beginning with a solitary figure migrating between panels that is slowly joined by other figures, and peaking with a vivid, large crowd filling the screens entirely. The crowd then begins to ebb away until an entirely blank set of screens remain, creating a dark waiting canvas onto which the solitary figure will return to start the cycle again. This assembly and disassembly reflects the artist's response to his experience as an audience member at previous Bumbershoot festivals.

I've long been interested in how technology can be used to represent and reflect on human emotions and understanding. Most technology is used simply for control, but when repurposed for artistic use it can provide insights similar to and beyond that of other media. For the past several years I've focused on pieces that distill information into their elemental bits, and this series of LED works is a study in how we recognize meaning from the barest amount of information.

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