Last month I was invited to participate in the Conflux Festival! What an honor! Conflux—"the art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space"—is one of my favorite happenings in the fall. I was asked to lead a workshop and to exhibit Pixelator at Conflux HQ.

I've struggled with how the Pixelator should work in a gallery setting because one of the most important aspects of the project is that, in its natural environment, the Pixelator filters unwanted information in public spaces. (My conundrum was: if you can control the source material and the space, then what's the point?)

What I ended up proposing and installing was the Pixelator Lounge, which features a double-sided Pixelator suspended from the ceiling. Live digital television is projected on the back, a single armchair provides a perfect spot from which to view the pixelated image on the front, and Nevin's incredible album Rambler fills the space with an ambient soundtrack. I think adapting the project to this method of media consumption—invoking a living room setting and piping in actual live television—addressed the conceptual challenge nicely. People seemed to like it, at least!

As for the workshop, I figured what I could most offer was a way of seeing: a way of noticing and reimagining the city. My lecture and walk was entitled Adventures in Urban Alchemy, and it gave me a chance to define the specific practice of urban engagement I'm interested in. If alchemy is the art of transformation, then urban alchemy is the art of transforming common public structures and systems into rare moments of unauthorized culture. It mixes street art, culture jamming, and pranksterism into a whimsical, site-specific, moment of public engagement.

The workshop went so great! The whole group was very participatory, and we came up with some awesome ideas. Hurray! Also, Fast Company wrote a really nice piece the day before the talk, and I was invited back by David Darts, Conflux's Curatorial Director, to lead my talk/walk again with his media literacy class at NYU.