David Allan Rueter

This weekend, I de-installed Deaths in Iraq, 2004-2009, which was on view at the Gallery Project.  It’s a 4′x4′ sheet of 3/8″ acrylic (which weighs about 60 pounds!).  I painted it black on the back side, then drilled hundreds of small holes through the paint layer to let points of light shine through.  Each point represents the geographical location of a report of one or more of the 100,000+ combat-related deaths in Iraq, as described by the Iraq War Logs data leaked by WikiLeaks in October of 2010.  Here are some photos I took of the piece in the gallery:

01-Lovely Discipline from David Rueter on Vimeo.

Dimensions variable
2011
Surveillance camera, LCD TV, computer, 3D accelerator, custom OpenGL/OpenCL software

This installation presents a surveillance camera and a flat-panel TV. When a viewer approaches and steps into the camera’s field of view, the image from the camera slowly forms on the TV out of a mass of tiny moving white points on a black background. Stillness and patience are required to form an image, making the surveillance relationship less one-way and more negotiated. The resulting hypnotic and enticing animated image (which sometimes resembles blowing sand, or slow-moving spray from an ocean wave crashing on rocks) rewards the viewer’s participation.

Heatmap.js is a JavaScript component that generates a heatmap overlay layer for Google Maps, without requiring server-side tile generation. Given a list of geographical points, heatmap.js renders a colored density layer using the HTML5 Canvas.

The example above is a screenshot from a soon-to-be-released demo of heatmap.js.  Generated from the WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs, it shows the geographical density of reported deaths in a section of central Baghdad.

6’ x 6’
Work in Progress
Acrylic sheet, paint, lamp, aluminum frame, WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs data

Using data released by Wikileaks on October 22, 2010, this image depicts the locations of reports of deaths in Iraq. Between 2004 and 2009, 109,032 deaths were recorded in a total of 52,048 individual reports. I will use a CNC routing machine to etch these points into a layer of black paint on a large square transparent acrylic sheet, and will construct a lightbox using this panel.

A note on the data: this image was compiled using the more precise (but limited) data released by the Guardian. A popular “full” version of the war log data, which was distributed as a torrent, contains only rounded latitude/longitude numbers and is not suitable for detailed mapping.

Created using the R programming language.

8”x10”x3”
2010
Framed and matted LCD screen, computer, custom software, live Internet surveillance camera feeds

This piece was installed at The Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, MI.  A framed LCD screen displays a loop of several dozen live feeds from Internet surveillance cameras around the world.  A simple Google search can reveal thousands of such feeds, not all of which are intentionally public.  Often devoid of action, these vignettes let viewers peer into quotidian scenes framed and published by anonymous, unwitting contributors.

06-Invisible_Landmarks from David Rueter on Vimeo.

Dimensions variable
2008
Audio samples, stereo amplifier, speakers and subwoofer, flashlight, aerial photograph enclosed in acrylic sheet, computer, infrared camera, custom software, pollution geodata

This work was installed at the Work * Ann Arbor Gallery for the show (re)Mapping. Viewers enter a dark room, where they may shine a flashlight (which hangs from the ceiling) on a printed aerial photograph mosaic of the heavily polluted Gary, Indiana industrial region. Custom software, running on a computer hidden from view, uses an infrared camera to track the position of the flashlight beam on the photograph. Using pollution geodata collected from multiple government sources, as well as sound samples that represent different types of pollution, the software generates a real-time audio representation of pollution sources located within the illuminated area of the aerial photograph. Generated sounds range from quiet and intricate to loud and jarring.

Categories of data represented by the sound map:

* Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Sites
* Major Polluters (NPDES Major)
* Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUST)
* Brownfields
* Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) Sites
* Slag Dumps
* Point Discharge (PD) Locations

Since arriving in Berlin a month ago, I’ve been fascinated by the wall, or more precisely the many scars it left on the land which still remain today. The apartment I’m staying in is a half-block from where the wall used to stand, and I walk by deserted, overgrown fields on my way to the supermarket. Of tremendous help in exploring, examining, and contextualizing the space carved out by the wall is Stephanie Lange’s wonderful Google Earth KML file that highlights the areas formerly occupied by the wall and the adjacent no-mans-land fringe.
Aided by this data, several friends and I have plotted a path for a day-long interpretive walk along a section of the wall – be sure to contact me if you’re in Berlin and interested.

3’x5’
2009
Soil collected from underneath Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge, suspended in acrylic gel, acetate sheet, US EPA Toxics Release Inventory data

This work maps polluting US industrial facilities of the mid-Atlantic region, using soil collected from underneath Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Created during a weeklong charette geared towards developing urban land art, it situates the surrounding gallery space, the Temple Gallery (itself under the bridge as well), within the broader context of pollution and industry on the East Coast.

The big blotch in the top right corner is the Jersey Meadowlands, the middle blotch stretching down in a line from that spot is Philadelphia and the Delaware river, and the last large blotch in that line is Baltimore.

13”x19”
2008
Photography

To create this series, I loaded the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory geodata into Google Earth and got in the car. Laptop on the passenger seat, I drove to nearby industrial facilities that were on the list. Each toxic site I visited used elaborate landscaping to project a sculpted version of nature to the world. Inspired by the traditions of Romantic landscape painting and Paparazzi photography, I captured these facades with the help of a strobe light and the dreary Ohio winter sky.