Fourth Axis

In this piece, a radical work of Dutch architecture becomes the raw material for a series of experiments with time. Born in a computer, the building jumps again into video where it can mutate freely. Here, particles becomes pixels and matter becomes light, as the structure is melted, frozen, shattered, and melted again into a new, transmissible signal. Shot at the H2O expo, Zierikzee, The Netherlands. Architect: Lars Spueybroek/NOX. "Van McElwee transports his viewers hypnotically, viscerally, imaginatively through ingenious fascinating images and sounds. Traveling through his video art, you know you’re in the hands of a dreamer and an artist." - Diane Carson, St. Louis Riverfront Times

A wandering figure traces tunnels through a space of possibilities. “… A kind of evocative visual poetry, equally stimulating to the eye and the mind” David Finkelstein, Film Threat

Movie theaters are temples that have morphed into labyrinths, architectural fractals leading from the actual to the virtual. These multiplexes steer a diverse public through branching hallways to imaginary worlds, where the labyrinth shatters into glowing handheld screens. Designed as a movie for phones, PLEX is an architectural model of an endless cinema, made from a set of twenty black cube interiors filled with colored screens and artificial lobby music. A spiraling camera path connects the cube units into a free-form structure that occasionally loops back on itself, creating intersections of cascading screens. An external view would reveal a chain of cubes endlessly exploring a 3D grid of possibilities. The cubes play like wind chimes, blown by chance.

Apparitions, maze marchers, new world natives. Recorded in Minecraft and Aguas Calientes, Peru.

Transfinite Loops is a reflection on the mind's tendency to create metaphysical order in the face of chaos. The piece is both a model and a metaphor for that process. Nighttime images of carnival rides appear, mesh and then dissolve into blackness, accompanied only by the sound of wind. The work unfolds like a series of thoughts, as time and space are unraveled and woven back together into intricate knots. "As gorgeous as any fireworks display, Van McElwee’s Transfinite Loops invents dazzling astral patterns." -Stephen Holden, The New York Times "Vivid video origami erupts into a blizzard…leading out of time & space" -TL Reid, Afterimage "Transfinite Loops is infectious, life-affirming and beautiful. It makes you feel good." -David Bonetti, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

This house is under construction. Its design incorporates numerous points of view into one flowing form. The sound is a field of musical patterns without a tonal center.

Imagine a fly's eye, but with each facet roaming independently through nighttime Tokyo. These multiple perspectives are woven together at brain wave frequencies, creating new patterns and new spaces. “It can be argued that McElwee’s Liquid Crystal simulates a new reality conducive to human survivability in the hypermodern age.” Robert Kohn, Afterimage “McElwee’s videos are not viewed so much as experienced. The repeated images, constantly changing, become embedded in the memory like a visual mantra.” - Rudy Zapf, Playback

Real-world objects are turned inside-out, imploding into unnatural spaces, becoming a single substance of endless forms.

This house is under construction. Its design incorporates numerous points of view into one flowing form. The music for Aperspectival House uses a process of kaleidoscopic sound layering, as Hamilton’s parallel to the additive textures found in the video. All the original sounds are short recordings of construction sounds – hammering and sawing – which are transformed into somewhat coherent pitches and rhythms. TH “Where today we seem to discern only shrieks and dissonance, tomorrow we will find a new tone, a new form, a new perception.” Jean Gebser

FOLDED FOLLIES is an improvisation on Bernard Tschumi’s deconstructionist follies at Parc La Villette in Paris. The structures, which the architect has described as "post-humanist, are translated into motion and then subjected to a radical transformation. Unusual demands are made of the recording capability of the medium, as video and audio signals are pushed to extremes. Space collapses and the follies are literally folded in time.

3D Anaglyph Video. For this project, floor plans from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, ca. 2000 B.C.E, were extruded into an artificial 3D space. A virtual camera floats through this odd-angled honeycomb of halls, doors, and passageways, accompanied only by the sound of hands rubbing together. Archaic Rooms suggests a glimpse into an inaccessible level of the unconscious, one with no boundaries, no exterior, and no beginning or end. Dimensions variable.

A virtual camera coils through an endless chain of orange dodecahedra filled with music and pale blue snow. The camera floats from one facet to another, connecting eleven blizzard-filled volumes in unpredictable groupings. Unlike the cubes that make up PLEX, chains of dodecahedra do not form loops, so in BLUE SNOWBALLS, two or more spaces will never be superimposed.

In Buddhist architecture, the pagoda symbolizes Nirvana, the state of enlightenment. In Radio Island, this metaphor is expanded to include the entire built environment and the whole of ordinary consciousness. Mutating images of ancient and modern Japanese structures develop within a complex electronic score of radio signals and data transmission. Unusual editing techniques weave these images and sounds into a dense field of improvisation. The resulting texture becomes the raw material for totally new forms. Through a sea of noise, Radio Island charts a course from architecture to music; from the referential to the absolute.

A procession branches into clouds of variation; one as many, many as one. The sound was created from the voices of Beijing schoolgirls reciting prose in unison. "A fascinating visual study…strikingly beautiful." David Finkelstein, Film Threat

Elevator music branches and flows in new directions. Unadorned concrete structures exude layer upon layer of natural scenery. These virtual vistas unfold in surges, accompanied by mutating Muzak. Natureland reflects the crucial process by which we navigate the nested realities of our programmed environment, embracing illusion and its mechanism, weaving dissonant strands of experience into a pattern that we can call "our world." "The expansion of consciousness, the creation of timelessness and the generation of new worlds embody beauty without boundaries in Van McElwee’s video art. His work is challenging; it compels us to experience, perceive, and ultimately to live more fully." T.L. Reid, Afterimage “Breathtaking,” David Finkelstein, Film Threat

In this world, the Paris Metro is a teleporter. Branching timelines lead to peculiar spaces that contain only fragments of the original Metro.