City Gallery

Past exhibition

Eugene Hansen: Port Replicator

9 August–7 September 2003

ARTISTS Eugene Hansen (VJ Rex), with Kaleb Bennett, Keri Whaitiri, Oliver Penny, Simon Morris

Operating under the alias VJ Rex, Eugene Hansen reworks found video footage, using sound-mixing and image-mixing techniques from contemporary DJ/VJ culture. A channel surfer, the Wellington artist describes his Internet-downloaded source material as ‘data to be reformatted’.

Port Replicator is a work in progress. Every Monday, during the show, between 10am and 2pm, Hansen performs live in the space with a different sound artist. He mixes visuals live from a laptop, while the sound artist mixes audio taken from the same footage. What’s produced during these live performances becomes the audio-visual component of the show for the following week. The show changes, but each iteration derives from the same sources.

The gallery walls are painted lilac and pink, connected by a sleek blue stripe running the length of the gallery, by painter Simon Morris. Sound emerges from speakers inserted into plastic toys and other items obtained from the $2 Shop scattered through the space. There are digital prints of stills from the video clips.

The title refers to a device which converts a laptop from an autonomous computer into a hard drive, into which printers, monitors, and keyboards can be plugged.