‘Inside the studio’ with Input Output
Billy Baccam and Alex Ramos brought the moon to Zócalo one evening in early March.
Viewers might have sworn their lunar spectacle was the real thing as it hovered and rotated a few feet above the grass at the Spring Branch apartment complex. They were close enough to make out the details of craters. Beeps and scratchy voices from NASA’s Apollo 11 mission added to the effect.
The artists, who collaborate as Input Output, call the piece “XI” as an homage to Apollo 11, but it also channels one of their earthbound idols, James Turrell. They admire the way Turrell communicates with light and brings things outside the realm of understanding down to
Earth.
“XI” was designed to challenge perception, Baccam says. “We’re projecting this 3D image that’s revolving onto a 2D plane. It really plays with your optics. It’s bizarre.”
Input Output conceived “XI” last summer for the outdoor wedding reception of a Houston couple who were married within Turrell’s installation at the the Live Oak Friends Meeting
House. People who hire Input Output often don’t really know what they do, Ramos says.
“They just know we make cool stuff.”
That cool stuff comes together by mixing the digital and the physical, which might involve experimental, fly-by-the-seat-ofyour-pants engineering. “Sometimes we’re just like, we’re just gonna try this out and hope it works,” Ramos says.
Getting lunar reconnaissance imagery was relatively easy. Projecting it onto a large, lasercut birchwood disk suspended from the branches of trees, not so much. “I knew we were gonna have straps and dangle it kind of like a chandelier,” Ramos says. “But none of it was thoroughly thought out until we got there and put it together.”
Input Output’s start in Zócalo’s first-of-its-kind program felt shaky, too. The collaborative won one of three residencies with benefits that include living and studio space. Baccam got the apartment because Ramos has a house, a life partner and two kids. Then another winner, Ramos’ friend Ron Jones, lost his residency when his criminal record came to light.
“We had to analyze what the residency means to us and how we make the best out of the situation,” Ramos says.
He’s happy they stayed. The residency has already been transformative for Input Output, he says. For one thing, they were able to buy a pair of expensive projectors the size of minifridges, and the management enhanced the complex’s electrical power to accommodate whatever the artists might make there with the equipment.
Ramos says the garage of his home in south-central Houston is packed with stuff he hoards for the physical aspects of Input Output’s work. Their Zócalo studio is the opposite of that: An organized gear-head’s realm of laptops, monitors and projectors.
Like Day for Night
Input Output coalesced on the fly in 2016, after Baccam answered Ramos’ call on
Facebook for a programmer. They had once worked together at an Apple store but barely knew each other. Ramos was installing a piece for Electric River, a graffiti and projection show at Aerosol Warfare in Houston’s East End. Baccam went there to discuss another project but brought his laptop, and they got right to work.
They both wanted to work in the vein they had seen at the defunct Day for Night Festival. “We were interested in the way they presented, art, digital media and technology in one bubble … to convey a message,” Ramos says.
A native of Mexico City, Ramos has made all kinds of art since he was a kid. He paints, sculpts, creates digital work and writes poetry. “I’m kind of scatterbrained,” he says. “I like to do a lot of things at the same time. It’s how I process the world.”
During his eight years in the Marine Corps, which took him to Afghanistan, Ramos spent free time making murals. Now 33, he earns a living teaching computer science at the WIDE School in Sugar Land.
Baccam, 31, is from Dallas. He studied fashion design, electrical engineering and entrepreneurship, working for a tech startup in New York before coming to Houston. Those skills converged after he began exploring a visual-design programming language called Processing. “It allows you to code line by line, but the output is this repeating or looping pattern that creates generative art,” he says. “So you have a conversation with the computer to create these pieces.”
Input Output’s work also grew out of graffiti culture, especially its guerilla aspects. In 2017, when Gonzo247 hired them to promote his Hue Mural Festival, they lit up the “Be Someone” mural across Interstate 45 near downtown with flashing lights, asking no one’s permission. They set up projectors on both sides of the overpass and stationed themselves in a median, thinking they’d just grab a quick video of the sight and dismantle it.
“Then people stopped their cars and parked. A crowd formed. People pulled out their phones, and it went viral,” Baccam says. “Sometimes we surprise ourselves.”
“We try to work at the edge of what is possible and push ourselves with every piece just outside of — or sometimes way outside of — our comfort zone,” Ramos says. “The setups can be a conversation piece in themselves.”
COVID creativity
The COVID-19 pandemic’s social distancing rules have forced them to rethink possibilities again. They’ve done Instagram takeovers for Zócalo and live online Q&As but have not yet staged anything as elaborate as “XI.”
“This is a conversation we have almost daily. How is this going to change what we do?” Ramos says.
They have to be mum about their commissions from Seismique, the alien-themed experiential museum being built within a former Bed, Bath & Beyond store building in southwest Houston, other than to say that they are creating some of the spaces there. (Construction continues, although the opening date may shift beyond this fall.)
Baccam also is developing more purely digital projects. “A lot of our previous pieces relied on viewers as participants; they interact with sensors to create visual effects in real time,” he says. Now he’s using 3D animations. “We are interacting with the viewer in a different way,” he says.
Ramos is creating “face filters” for Facebook and Instagram, using social media as another tool for creation. “Social distancing is going to have a long-lasting effect on how humans interact,” he says. “It’s the end of ‘hug me every time you see me.’ How do we create experiences that are more intimate?”
Whatever the rules are in a week, a month or a year, Baccam says, “Input Output is still going to be creating and adapting. We thrive on changes. Creativity isn’t just about unlimited resources; it can stem from constraints.”
Ramos calls their work antidisciplinary. “We don’t allow situations like this to hold us back. We’re constantly re-imagining ourselves. We don’t like to attach ourselves too much to any given medium, content or tool.”
As panelists this year for the Houston Arts Alliance, they also are reviewing grant proposals from the city’s other digital media artists. Seeing how everyone is adapting has been powerful,” Ramos says. “It really brings hope.”