Below are a series of frames from a video I took at the opening of “There’s no me without you,” Finnegan Shannon’s show at Pioneer Works on September 11, 2026. Ariana Martinez’s delightfully tactile artworks are traveling along Finnegan’s conveyer belt for us to interact with.
We were among the first to arrive. I excitedly started picking objects up and putting them on different trays. Alabaster was like, “No, no, no! You can’t do that!” and held on to one or two to put them back in their rightful place. Then others started doing the same. And Alabaster realized the controlled mayhem is kind of the point.
The video is about two minutes long. I asked Claude to write code to extract a frame every ten seconds, which I then plugged into Google Collab. This is something I never would have thought of being able to do had I not taken Handmade Datasets at SFPC over the summer.
Since the original post, I also used code to trim the video down to 1 minute, because I want you to hear a bit of Ariana’s gorgeous soundscape! Find that clip below after 0:20 secs.
Description of Finnegan’s There’s no me without you: frame by frame
Setting: A darkened room. Finnegan’s conveyor belt, a blue-rimmed track of overlapping white crescent plates, snakes in an angular loop. It carries round wooden trays, each bearing a sculpture. Masked guests sit around it, picking up and handling each piece as it passes. The camera sees through one guest’s eyes.
0:00 Lights flare against a black ceiling. A guest in glasses and a navy shirt leans toward the belt as a wiry white tangle and a cream-and-blue woven tube glide by.
0:10 Three lamps blaze overhead. Below, a guest in a yellow floral shirt sits alone, head bowed over something in their hands, as an empty tray drifts past.
0:20 Our hands squeeze the woven tube: soft, ridged, cream at the ends, banded blue in the middle. Across the belt, the guest in the floral shirt studies something small, a dark looped form beside them.
0:30 Hazy glare. The guest in navy rests a hand on a flat, fibrous piece while a lumpy turquoise stone rounds the corner. A strand of white tangle blurs past the lens.
0:40 The guest in the floral shirt raises dark tubular shapes high overhead, arms lifted into the dazzle, as a heap of green shards waits on its tray.
0:50 A guest with a blonde bob sits beside a tall black vessel crowded with rounded knobs. Next to them, a curled dark form is cradled in careful hands; the green shards ride between.
1:00 A blurred, tilting moment at the belt’s corner: fingers on the green shards, clasped hands, a third figure half-hidden in shadow.
1:10 The knobbly black vessel is lifted in two hands and weighed. In the foreground, our hand holds a pale rod beside a square of orange-splashed cloth with a frayed tassel.
1:20 Before us, a cluster of blue-green blooms, textured like coral and dotted with pale beads. Across the way, the guest in navy grips a long dark tube.
1:30 The wall clock glows like a small sun. Our hand rests on a smooth grey stone on the wooden ledge, beside sunglasses and printed pages.
1:40 The guest in navy and a dark-haired guest in shadow work the long dark tube between them, while the green shards glide past.
1:50 Our fingers turn a small cream object with a glint of blue. Across the belt, white wire loops open like a spring, and other hands lift a dark arch of tubes fitted with handles.
2:00 The guest in the floral shirt holds the black vessel against their cheek, almost an embrace. Tangles of white ribbon rest on trays at the corners.
2:10 Our hand lies flat on the moving white plates as the green heap rolls toward us: broken glazed pieces, speckled like lichen.
2:20 We lift one pale green shard to the light, the rest of the pile under our other hand. Across the way, the guest in the floral shirt turns the white wire tangle in their fingers.
Finnegan’s conveyer belt with artworks by Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Ariana Martinez, and Alex Dolores Salerno will be up at Pioneer Works until December 20! Learn more HERE!