Brett Williams Studio

This work is a engine which expends a lot of work but goes no where. Keeping a rhythm and making noise.

“His work represents a buffer between the realized and the unrealized. Artifact/Undercard is a prime example of this gesture. The cork plate and iceberg form rest on negative space, allowing the viewer some “room” to consider the disconnect between meaning,  represented by the tip of the “iceberg” here, and intention, i.e. the motor that drives the process. Within this gap, the artist builds his visual vocabulary, perpetually tinkering with both the the object and his emotional and intellectual connection to its implicit metaphor. This liminal space is the locus of boredom, failure, and anxiety, but also of curiosity, inquiry, and discovery.”

- Joe Kohlburn

This work mimics a misfire in a brains synapse. An action is triggered but there is a delay in the transmission. This delay creates a rhythm and chaos with an underlying tension of calm and release.

This work was commissioned by Granite City Art and Design district for G-CADD show 3 Jack n Jenny.

The work is powered by the wind and makes a clacking sound when the plastic pipes bang into each other.

Also resembles a fountain or ejaculation etc.

This sculpture was commissioned for the first ever Murmuration Festival of music and art at Cortex in St. Louis.

The work is powered by the wind or human interaction to make sound. The sound is made by the plastic pipes clacking together.

This work uses servos, a type of motor, that spin opposite each other to create rhythm and chaos. 

I want to Live Forever is a kinetic sound sculpture that generates it’s own continuous sound. A jingle bell is turning clockwise on a servo and bangs on a pink eraser that is turning counter clockwise on another servo.

The viewer hears different versions of the sound generated by the bell. We hear ambient noises of the servos turning and the bell jingling.  We also hear the percussion the bell makes when it strikes the microphone. These sounds are also picked up by the microphone and affected and amplified through the guitar amplifier. The result is a hunting rhythmic percussion that fills the space but echoes like a sound system at a concert in a stadium.

Slow Nature Memory in Audible Interruptions Sound Series at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Click here for audio.

Documentation of site specific installation titled Feedback at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis Missouri.

I have always been interested in using technology as a stand in for my shortcomings. I have always wanted to play electric guitar and drums but I lack the coordination and patience to do so.

Feedback is a site-specific installation that uses an oscillating fan to blow and strum vocal microphones to create percussion and undulating feedback that grows and changes over time. The audio signal is processed through various effects processors and an amplifier commonly used with electric guitars. The audio is then picked up by the microphones and looped back trough the entire system creating an undulating continuous feedback soundscape.

Click here for audio of the installation.

Click here for a link to a review of this piece in Art in America (may take a while to load).

Memory Old and New is an exploration of combining older artwork with recent and new work. The combine process mimics the way the effects of time changes how we remember events and experiences from the past and how the perception shapes new memories and experiences. This new piece uses an old wooden sculpture with a rubber tube encased in glass from the early nineteen nineties and combines it with a TV and pedestal from two separate installations from the early two thousands. The 30-second video is a new creation using a static shot of the rubber tube element from the original sculpture. The special effects of stars and sound track, both created by the artist, refer back to his childhood video game consoles like the Atari 2600 and original Nintendo, and his love of 80's hip hop and hardcore music.

Robert Goetz and I used to collaborate as Nosey Parker.

Here we perform a history lecture and panel discussion of our artist output as Nosey Park.

I built a circuit board radio transmitter which broadcasts on the public radio frequency bands.

Feedback II at Expo Chicago 2013

Special Project for Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Collaboration with Kevin Harris

The way we remember past events in our lives are not reliable and cannot be fully trusted. We construct our memories.

I have strong associations with sound and flashes of images when I try to remember discreet moments related to the past and my perceived memory. I do not trust my constructed version of the past. I do trust the rhythms and patterns that emerge from the fog of memory.

Slow Memory Overrun is an investigation of memory and the difficulties associated with remembering.

Click here for audio.

Click here for audio.

Commercials and Blings

I started the Brett Commercials in 1996 while in graduate school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At this time, I was watching a lot of television and I became interested in the conventions of early Reality TV shows like C.O.P.S. and MTV's The Real World. I admired the look that resulted from a low-tech style shot with hand-held cameras during "unscripted" scenarios with "real people" rather than trained actors. Even though Reality TV shows were using these conventions the commercials that appeared between them still had the look and feel of slick productions populated by actors whose appearances and fictional lives adhered to the Hollywood ideal. I noticed there wasn't anyone that looked or acted like me in commercials so I came up with the idea of making my own advertisements that brand me as a product, lifestyle, etc. To do this, I started video taping my self and my everyday life. I would edit the videos using the thirty second to one minute format that commercials traditionally use. My goal was to tell a full story in that time frame. I also shot, edited and made my own music from sampled sources. The one constant in all of the commercials was that my name appeared at the beginning of each commercial. This device established me as the brand.

I made several of these commercials for my thesis show which was held in a movie theater. My commercials played in between the other students' films so the audience was forced to watch commercials away from their TV viewing at home. (This was several years before movie theaters started showing TV commercials before the feature film.) After the screenings, I became a local celebrity for a short time around Chicago. Strangers outside of the art school community recognized me on the streets, in the subway, and in bars and restaurants so my marketing campaign was a success.

The work has evolved from these early commercials to new works called Blings that simply use my name and motion graphics with music. In fact, I don't physically appear in any of the new work at all. These pieces are more like intros to shows on MTV like Viva La Bam or the weird little shorts that MTV uses as network identifications. In television industry jargon they are called bumpers. The new work consists of looped DVDs which are shown on flat panel monitors mounted to the wall or on conventional televisions placed on pedestals. The Blings function as video installations rather than commercials that play between films.

The Brett Commercials were made between 1996 and 2000.

There commercials played between films at film festivals. Each commercial mimics reality TV or local low budget TV commercials. What is Brett? Why do we want one?

These are working prototypes of my sculptures. I use the prototype process to work out technical issues and to test the durability of the work.

I also use the the documentation of the prototypes in grant applications.