Jay Needham is a media artist and producer who embraces a multi-disciplinary approach to arts practice. He received his MFA from The California Institute of the Arts. His radio “Listening at the Border” documentary was a special presentation at Sonic Interventions in Amsterdam and was part of the Noise Theory Noise #2 conference and exhibition in London. “Blacktop”, his narrative work for radio, aired and streamed as a part of New Media Scotland’s Resonant Cities program and will be released as a part of “Deep Wireless II in 2005 by New Adventures in Sound Art. Themes that often appear in his work include borders and boundaries and personal and family mythologies. Jay is a faculty member in the Program in Audio, College of Mass Communication and Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

13 Buildings is a narrative video that reflects on the evaporative nature of memory and our hopes and ideas towards a journey home. The lanes of traffic have dissolved between the many places that I have lived and this work represents a coming to terms with that natural space between. That transience, that decade of movement has afforded both opportunity and loss, and I am interested in creating work that describes the social, political and personal dynamics of this interaction. In 13 Buildings, locative habitats become the topic of a conversation between two people united as friends but who are philosophically opposed.