Running on Empty

Running on Empty (2017), stems from Hiller's commission to create Channels, a monumental audio-sculptural installation that incorporates 103 cathode-ray tube television sets programmed to play reports of near-death experiences. While constructing Channels, Hiller and Matt's Gallery Director Robin Klassnik discovered one particular television set that spontaneously and intermittently communicated a haunting, poignant message of its own. Their attempts to document that elusive message, to recreate and capture the phenomenon on camera, even as the television's functioning proceeded to decay and degenerate in a violent medley of colour and pattern, forms the subject of Running on Empty - a work which thus becomes about artistic making itself, about processes of collaboration, moments of serendipity, and the pleasures of visual play.