Daniel Lefcourt & Megan McLarney

My wife, Megan McLarney, and I are both artists. During the crisis we have been quarantined at home together and locked out of our studios. Like just about everyone else, we have been managing childcare, remote jobs, political action, maintaining relationships with family and friends, cooking, housework (not to mention our own marriage) all in our small apartment in Brooklyn. Meanwhile there has been so much to process emotionally, intellectually, and politically. At some point we realized we were either going to kill each other or create work together.

Megan began shooting videos and photos of the compost pile she had been constructing at home along with dirt, natural objects, and debris in the neighborhood. She also recorded herself interacting with the compost and detritus. Meanwhile I returned to an earlier project called Anti-Scans. I was using a 3D scanning technique (photogrammetry) to scan things that are nearly-impossible to properly scan, such as wet objects, very thin objects, moving objects, etc. Slowly our two projects merged.

Megan focused on recording the video, stills, and 3D models (or anti-scans), while I began "throwing" the content into a kind of 3D compost pile. What I mean by this is that using 3D software I wrote a script that would grab Megan’s unedited videos, stills, and 3d models from a folder and randomly combine them in 3D space. The lighting of our 3D compost pile and the continually shifting view are also combined and edited using randomization.

The result is a kind of living collage. It is a compost pile of digital content. It is "living", because there is no beginning or end to the video. It is designed to play indefinitely, constantly regenerating itself into new configurations. The project has become a way for us to think-through-making. It is a way for us to stir the scrap pile so as to give it some air. It is a way to tend to our shit.

The video for the Campoli Presti Logbook is a recording of the compost pile as it generates and regenerates. It is important to view the work at maximum quality and at the largest possible screen size.

Daniel Lefcourt & Megan McLarney