Today's generation lives on the Internet, amid all of its various cyber communities, search engines, information and random findings. I'm Feeling Lucky, the latest installation work by Samuel Chow, continues his interest in interconnectivity and collective and individual subjectivities, addressing the changing ways by which we access and consume moving images for learning and for pleasure. Alluding to Google's pervasive search button, Chow's time-based installation mirrors our daily surfing experiences. Chow constructs a network of possibilities composed of found online videos, images and sounds from his own surfing expeditions. Multi-layered moving images interweave and collide into a seamless, vibrant visual mash-up. Drawing upon the cinematic language of nature documentaries, amateur travel videos and suspense, Romantic exoticism and digital motion graphics, I'm Feeling Lucky is an allegory for interconnectivity forged through the intertwined informational pathways of the Internet, and explores the roles for both exhibitors and voyeurs.
Appearing as a “random path network,” I'm Feeling Lucky has no real beginning or end, which differentiates it from linear film narratives and video loops. Programmed possibilities of randomized sequences form interconnected webs of moving-image narrative paths. Each time a viewer walks into the installation, they will experience something different and unique; the moment may carry them from forest to sea or sky, where birds or horses may float. Audience members can only ever experience their own instance of Chow's moving-image network, a fact that mirrors our understanding of how what we find online is itself indeterminate and only a subsection of a greater body of knowledge in the virtual world. I'm Feeling Lucky is a powerful comment on the individualism of the Internet and the search for something to hold onto that results when technology threatens to gain control. It highlights the nature of contemporary cinematic experience as heterogeneous, subjective and individually determined. Our experience as voyeurs leads us into a random environment where anything can happen.
Kathleen Mullen
Samuel Chow was born in Hong Kong. He received a B.A. in visual studies from the University of Toronto, where he was a National Scholar and an M.F.A. in film, video and new media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work encompasses paintings, installations, photography, prints, films, videos and new media, including “random path networks.” He has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and his work has been adapted for national broadcast by CBC Radio.