Good Morning

Mornings are like holidays

Insomuchas

I always look forward to seeing 

brief 

twilight

on my live solar gradient

laptop background

Digital Twilight

Digital Twilight is a video installation in which I livestream my desktop to the installation site for the two hours it takes my solar gradient laptop background to change from day to night, sharing my digital twilight with the site in real time.

I always loved the brief hour or so of twilight on my laptop’s generic live solar gradient background. On the many days I had to be inside at my computer during quarantine, seeing the sunset, even through my laptop screen, helped me feel like I was still conscious of the rhythms of the day. The solar gradient background is a surprisingly elegant and unobtrusive connection to circadian rhythms. 

This digital sunset overwhelmed me with emotion. The only thing missing from the fulfillment of this experience is the desire to share it with others. By live streaming my real-time web activity foregrounded to the background of this repetitive motif, I can be with those who may be experiencing its fleeting pixelated beauty on the other end. Sort of like hovering my cursor over a friend’s in a Google doc, or looking at the moon and wondering who else is looking at the same moon. This work raises questions about digital togetherness and the act of livestreaming. What is worth watching live to us? What does it mean to share an experience with someone else?

Check out a recording of one day of this project, December 3rd, 2022, below; screenshots show all four phases of the color change over two hours.

This piece was shown in April 2022 at my video exhibition in Brooklyn.