The preparation of the massive 2nd floor space of the Art Gallery of Windsor has begun...   Thinkbox is a project-based collective exploring material and technique to produce works that develop complex questions to simplified answers about art, technology, and the nature of multimedia creation. Thinkbox intersects with mass culture through a variety of initiatives ranging from gallery installations, performances, and the release of audio/video products. Archive brings together the latest sound and visual works by the six-member core of Thinkbox, which consists of Christopher Bissonnette, Mark Laliberte, Chris McNamara, Steve Roy, Rob Theakston and Bill Van Loo. Selected works include Bissonnette’s Cathedral, an austere, meditative assemblage of sculpture and electronic sound compositions made from reverberation and resonance. Combining ingenuity and technology, Bissonnette transmits sounds through ordinary objects and surfaces, creating a sustained, or extended, sonic ambience from “in-between” and background sounds. By contrast, Laliberte’s ( ( ( vvvvvvvv ) ) )  is intensely visual, an enveloping video environment which presents the audience with a parallel representation of the world. This DVD projection engages the visitor within an aerial view of a printed cartoon city, full of wandering aerial movements, occasional reminders of gravity, and a persistent soundtrack of droning voices. Laliberte describes ( ( ( vvvvvvvv ) ) )  as a scene “whose content literally hangs in the air”. Establishing Shots, a projection by Chris McNamara focuses on the opening visuals in any scene of a movie that convey a sense of time and place for characters (and by extension, viewers). The video work disrupts these fundamental cues, testing their function by introducing a series of fragmented narrative strands in the form of foreign-language voiceovers and subtitles. The voices and text might all represent different characters and points of view, but they also encourage viewers to read between the lines of a linear narrative and to find other poetic possibilities. In his latest soundwork Rob Theakston explores other forms of information that help us make sense of the world. His compositions deal with metadata, its flexibility, and the notion of information recycling. Theakston bases his compositions on metadata from an album database of over 700,000 records and translating them into sound, making new music out of “allmusic.” ISOLATE.CONNECT by Steve Roy pairs electronic soundscapes with photography and lightbox technology to continue in a minimalist tradition he has been exploring for over five years. The sound component features compositions involving Roy and a collaborator, who produce their own unique sound pallets (ISOLATE) which is also blended (CONNECT). Bill Van Loo, a producer, musician, and sound artist, has made forays into the visual realm, though morphing and riffing on imagery in a manner akin to soundwork. Van Loo contributes recent photography (entitled Triptych) and a video creation, finding scenes and images that display some sort of beauty in the midst of, or in spite of, brokenness or decay. Mark Laliberte / Descending C-90, 2006 Pantone Misprint (Multiple), 2004 2 of 6 ipod listening stations (one for each member of the collective; each station contains about 2 hours worth of solo compositions, sonic works, and live performance excerpts) Thinkbox (L-R): Steve Roy, Mark Laliberte, Chris McNamara, Bill Van Loo, Rob Theakston, Christopher Bissonnette / photo: May 12, 2006   Thinkbox: Archive will feature ongoing documentation in the form of a new CD release and a full-colour, scholarly catalogue produced in collaboration with the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, Ontario.