Mixed-Media Assemblage

Overview

Objects (Distributed) is an interactive installation composed of twenty open Altoids tins arranged in a five-by-four grid across a custom-height table. Designed for two viewers seated opposite one another, the work transforms the familiar act of looking into a shared exercise in attention. Each participant wears noise-cancelling headphones looping an independent soundtrack while silently exchanging a stack of data frames positioned at the corner of the table. As the cards circulate between them, the objects housed within the tins are gradually discovered, one container at a time.

Each Altoids tin functions as an individual archive, preserving a single object or small grouping of related materials drawn from the artist’s life. Personal artifacts, photographs, currency, textiles, ephemera, found objects, and fragments of daily experience occupy identical containers without hierarchy. No single object is presented as more important than another. Instead, meaning accumulates through sequence as the viewer moves methodically from container to container, constructing relationships that are never explicitly explained.

Unlike a conventional display, the installation resists passive viewing. The table’s reduced height encourages a slower, more intimate encounter, recalling the posture of two people gathered around a chessboard. Attention becomes collaborative rather than solitary. The exchanged data frames guide discovery while preserving silence, allowing the objects themselves to generate conversation internally rather than verbally.

Within EZRA, the Altoids tin operates as a repeatable architectural unit capable of holding memory, evidence, and narrative. Here, the container becomes less important than the act of opening, observing, and continuing onward. The work demonstrates that archives are not experienced all at once but assembled gradually through deliberate acts of looking.

Objects (Distributed) extends one of the central propositions of EZRA: meaning is not discovered in a singular object, but emerges through sustained attention distributed across many small encounters.

Metadata

Artist
Seth / Ezra Dager

Year
2026

Medium
Mixed-Media Assemblage

Status
Complete

Archive
Human Archive

Location
The Rigley Field

Components
Twenty open Altoids tins containing personal artifacts, photographs, found objects, textiles, printed matter, currency, and collected ephemera displayed across a custom-height wooden table; paired noise-cancelling headphones; sequential data frames.