JeffuBurger is an interactive video installation which was featured in Nourishment: Art that feeds the soul and makes strong funny bones, at the Art Institute of Boston, April 2009.

JeffuBurger playfully explores the fragmentation of identity in the fast-food age using semiotics and deep fryer fat. This interactive video installation uses humor to investigate the viewer’s relationship to language, advertising, and culture. By using everyday objects found in my kitchen, I have been exploring new approaches to video and sculptural images that question how we construct and identify with the business of food.

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JeffuBurger installed at Art Institute of Boston, photo by Rob Coshow

Press

Cate McQuaid, “A Vegas-style staging of the scripture”, Boston Globe, April 22, 2009

Fun, interactive art: Puns, parodies, and jokes have always been Jeffu Warmouth’s mainstay. Warmouth’s interactive video installation brings the viewer into the middle of a fast-food war between “Jeffu Burger” and “JFC.” Life-size videos of Warmouth in uniform, ready to serve up the shakes and fries, stand at the ready as the viewer uses a touch screen to order. One or the other will prepare the meal, as his adversary complains. The food is crazy – one server dons onion-ring chain mail to protect himself from the slings and arrows of his business – but usually there’s sly social commentary at work. It’s a whopper of an installation.

Greg Cook, “Our digital landscape,” Boston Phoenix, April 28, 2009

Warmouth’s video installation is a satiric face-off between McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken joints. You order off interactive computer menus that feature a mix of conceptual and absurdist gags. One restaurant prepares your order (which often seems to involve Warmouth dumping a bucket of chickenish stuff on his head) while the other heckles (that guy will put anything in his burgers). A serious-silly joke about fast food and conceptual art, it’s a hoot.

Sebastian Smee, “In cyberarts, technology overrides emotion”, Boston Globe, May 1, 2009
This is an awesome review; I’ve never been called the WORST of anything by an art critic before!

Sometimes being an art critic has an undeniably comic dimension… The best curated group show I saw as part of the [Boston Cyberarts] festival was “Syntax” at the Photographic Resource Center. The worst was probably “Nourishment” at the Art Institute of Boston (reviewed in the Globe’s Galleries column by Cate McQuaid, April 22), which features the artists Jeff Warmouth and Ellen Wetmore.

M C Elish, Interview with Jeffu Warmouth, Boston Cyberarts Blog, April 27, 2009

MCE: Can you tell me a bit about what you have planned for the Cyberarts Festival?
JW: I’m creating competing fast food establishments. The gallery is going to be divided into large interactive video installations that represent two different fictional fast foods establishments, Jeffu Burger and JFC. [Read Complete Interview]

• Greg Cook, Boston Cyberarts Festival, New England Journal for Aesthetic Research, April 30, 2009
• Big Red On-The-Town: Art Institute of Boston, Big Red and Shiny, Issue #105
• James Nadeau, Observations on a day at the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Big Red and Shiny, Issue #105

JFC and JeffuBurger installed at Art Institute of Boston, photo by Fred Levy

NOURISHMENT

In 2009, JeffuBurger was featured in NOURISHMENT: New work by Jeffu Warmouth and Ellen Wetmore, an exhibition at the Art Institute of Boston, 700 Beacon Street near Kenmore Square, in conjunction with the Boston Cyberarts Festival. My contributions are JeffuBurger and JFC: competing fast-food franchises as room-sized interactive video installations. The show is free and open to the public.

Many thanks to everyone who attended the opening reception, especially if you decided to wear a paper JeffuBurger hat. And HUGE thanks to the people that made the installation possible:

• Fred Levy, who went far beyond his curator duty helping me build, install & troubleshoot
• Jim Manning, who spent 3 very full days helping me build & install. I owe you beers for life!
• Paul Concemi, who did lighting & videography for all the video content — thanks a million.
• Jeff Andree, who did product photography that wound up on the JeffuBurger menu boards.
• Brendon Wood, who composed music for JeffuBurger and JFC — the sound of fast food!
• And countless others who helped with the video shoots or installation: Sean English, Megan White, Rob Coshow, Alden Dalia… Sorry if I missed anyone, you know who you are. Cheers!