Technician 3 is a site-responsive installation by artist Charles Jevremovic at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art's show SENSE for ArtPrize 2015. The installation spans UICA’s Race Street Gallery, the adjacent South Wall and the Bridge. 

 

Technician 3 is comprised of three distinct walls: a horizontal wall of vitrines lit from within (Bridge), a vertical wall of circuit boards suspended from high above (South Wall), and a free-standing wall of metal equipment racks firmly anchored to the floor (Race Street Gallery). 

 

Referencing the organic, mid-century modernism of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, the original NASA logo and the sine wave, a seven-foot high wall of metal equipment racks undulates through the main gallery space.

 

Assembled with now-defunct high tech equipment salvaged from America’s space program, the U.S. military and elite research institutions, the wall features myriad panels, buttons, switches, knobs and counters. Monitors, lights, viewfinders and hidden recesses hold visual surprises. 

 

Four life-size ethereal images of technicians are projected onto the wall’s curved surface—electronic ghosts in the machine. Their eerie green likenesses appear and vanish across the metal expanse, simultaneously evoking Cold War nostalgia and science fiction déjà vu.

 

A haunting, original soundtrack further heightens the sense of timelessness with electronic elements, space sounds and found audio from NASA and the Soviet space program. 

 

On the Bridge opposite the main gallery, a wall of vitrines chronicles the evolution of the circuit board with grainy macro images—extreme close-ups back lit in an ombre effect that ranges from pure white to vibrant green. Holding forth in the center, posing in front of a vintage circuit board, is the iconic figure Rocket Boy, a 1960s tin toy. 

 

Between the Race Street Gallery and the Bridge, a wall made up  of hundreds of meticulously stitched vintage circuit boards spans the two-story South Wall,  glowing like a stained glass window—a symbol of the sacred status currently conferred to high tech. Fashioned from electronic detritus, its oxidized components and copper elements catch the light and shimmer like gold.

 

An homage to past and present nerds, geeks and brainiacs, Technician 3 uses images, light, sound and found objects to create a site-specific exploration of beauty, the nature of obsolescence, reinvention and rebirth. It deploys the structure and architectural confines of physical walls to tear down the metaphorical wall between technology and creativity.