The Shuffle installation was commissioned as part of the ongoing series of invited installations hosted by the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) within their downtown Los Angeles gallery space. However, in contrast to the prior exhibitions featured in the series, the Shuffle installation resisted simply introducing a formal/sculptural object within the gallery space, and instead intentionally proposed an installation strategy that would feature the space of the gallery itself. Specifically, Shuffle introduced a device within the otherwise static space of the gallery that would dramatize this space by producing temporary and heterogeneous spatial modifications within it.

Recalling the early “Nine Square Grid” exercises of John Hejduk, these spatial modifications were achieved by the minimal means necessary—in this case, through the introduction of three simple columns and their continual reorganization by means of a computer-controlled motorized system. Suspended from an overhead gantry crane framework, each column was capable of traveling laterally across the transverse direction of the gallery by means of a motorized trolley attached to its own gantry beam. Meanwhile, each of these three beams was also motorized, allowing them to travel back and forth along the longitudinal direction of the gallery. The two degrees of freedom afforded by the combined system thus allowed each column to freely move anywhere within the gallery space.

Accordingly, the columns were programmed to travel in random directions for random durations, and with each of these travel events separated by random intervals during which the columns would remain still in order to allow the resulting configuration to be experienced by visitors. The continual changing relationship of the columns to one another as well as to the surrounding walls and ceiling conditions of the gallery thus introduced an ongoing spatial differentiation that foregrounded and dramatized the space of the gallery. Moreover, in deference to this emphasis on space itself over form, the formal and aesthetic quality of the columns and the means for repositioning them were suppressed—framed instead merely as matter-of-fact instruments for producing a larger overall spatial experience.