Whether through the athletics of a freestyle BMX rider, the vision of a graffiti covered subway car, the flashing lights and moving bodies of a late night dance club performance, or even just a sidewalk game of chess, the New York experience has always been marked by a blending of extremely high levels of aural and visual stimulation. De Mengeling van New York highlight this experience not by replicating it, but by dissecting the visual from the audio; allowing the viewer to both examine one aspect of the overload juxtaposed with the marked absence of the other, and to perhaps find a state of peace within the excess.


With a nod to Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie, a historic painting celebrating the electric energy of New York City, Kaczmarek has mined the depths of the Internet and his own video recordings to revive historical media images from a now drastically different city and created a program that uses real time processing to blend, sample and layer these historic videos. Remixing them into a generative projection that never repeats itself, he creates a silent visual experience that celebrates the break-dancers, performers, graffiti artists and the regular citizens of the city who took their art, lives and experimentations outside into the real world for direct exposure and interaction. While initially frenetic, De Mengeling van New York is surprisingly meditative as the generative video reveals evolving patterns that remind, but never repeat, echoing the creative cycles where everything old is new again. Social media at one time was a dinner party instead of Facebook, dancing used to happen at a club instead of on YouTube, baseball was played on the street with a stick and a ball instead of on a Nintendo Wii, even chess was once played face to face instead of through the internet. This work reminds us that while we may have changed with new technology, we are still using this technology to do the very things that the human condition has always requested of us. We still seek out a connection with our fellow man to interact, exchange ideas, share opinions and exhibit our creative endeavors.