In 2009, Aubrey Birdwell collaborated with Eric Thompson to produce I Have 3 Pairs of Pants With My Brother I Share, a three-channel video and four-channel audio installation at Ohge LTD Gallery. Presented inside a reconstructed RV built within the gallery space, the work featured video panels looping underwater footage filmed in a lake thick with aquatic vegetation. The accompanying four-channel audio composition, written in SuperCollider, employed convolution processes derived from underwater recordings captured in a barrel of water. Supported with specialized equipment for the duration of the exhibition, the installation created an immersive environment that fused technical experimentation with surreal, site-specific architecture.
We are discontinuous beings in search of a simulation of continuity to subdue our fear of separation. The American home provides protection through encapsulation. In travel and as a form of rogue property we often carry with us a semblance of the familiar den. The box with a locked door full of comforts for us alone. We carry this capsule to contain our individual and separate existences even amidst so many others. Safety and freedom in equally moderate amounts. We reject and embrace that we are free-floating and disconnected from everything around us. We are exclusively what everything else is not. We are all discretely concrete and temporary, and it bothers the hell out of us, doesn't it?
In space and temporal media, these pieces attempt to re-stage our memories of what American life has been through our eyes. Through cultural quotation we attempt to pry open the locked box and articulate the immense void of American culture.
- Eric Thompson and Aubrey Birdwell (2009)