This piece involves twelve digital clock radios atop a six foot high wooden column, scrolling 32 text responses to the question, “If you were an activist, what would you be an activist about?” Inspired by my desire to be an activist about things I believe in, this project represents the ‘passive’ activism of modern society. The vast majority of us have something that we would be an advocate for, yet the vast minority of us actually do anything about it.

The clock radios are ‘hot wired’ to display text that is queued inside Max/MSP programming and sent as binary information. The text scrolls through the clocks’ seven-segment displays which further alters the messages through the display’s inability to accurately reproduce all 26 letters of the alphabet.

This piece was first installed at the Crane Arts Building in Philadelphia, PA:

The piece is intended to be look at from below, with the column acting as the soapbox from which this piece proclaims the statements of my friend and colleagues. I specifically did not include my own statement.

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I removed a panel of the column to reveal the wiring and programming involved. This ‘window’ into the piece displays the absurd amount of effort I put into this piece, compared with the simplicity (and overall disfunctionality) of the clock radio displays.

Initial Tests show how the keyboard input is displayed in the 7-Segment LED:

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