In Search of a Mystic Bartone
Mack McFarland, 2008,format, 1’48, Portland, OR
Applying the color / sound / note theory of Alexander Scriabin to the ubiquitous bar & tone, I scan three to seven chord notes looking for transcendence hidden within the siren song of broadcast technologies.
Mack McFarland is an interdisciplinary artist who splits his time between his home in Portland, Oregon and the 11th dimension. He works in many mediums, with a particular focus on video and drawing. Characterized by humor, mysticism, chance, repetition, and the multi-sensory, his work invites the viewer to experience the intersection of the aesthetic and the cognitive. McFarland has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2006, he created a work for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts' Time-Based Art Festival, and recently finished a three-month-long project for the Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, which Sheila Farr of the Seattle Times called "startling, nutty, and technologically relevant."