It wouldn't be too far fetched to call Judith Barry an architecture critic. Though buildings are an occasional enticement, Barry's real interest lies in social structures, and, what might be seen as the more pernicious, ideological aspects of urban planning. In her video work and installations, the cityscape is a vast sign system that acts as acculturator, traffic controller and mesmerist. This sign system is constructed in a manner analogous to film montage and carries with it the deceptively discrete mythology of the culture. Citizens of the city are acted upon by the technology, the prescribed recreations, the media and the architectonics of everyday commerce. For instance, in Casual Shopper, a couple engages in a somewhat silent seduction at a shopping mall. Their gaze rarely meets, but instead fastens on products in the surrounding stores. This fabricated romance is validated by its proximity to signifiers of affluence. A multi-channel installation, In the shadow of the city...vampry displays an assortment of city-dwellers, all viewed through cut-out "windows." This series of unfolding vignettes offers glimpses of life without concrete reference: there is no official perspective for the viewer, no narrative consummation, no direct subject for the gaze. Rather ...vampry gives us images of inertial desire, registered as a spectacle with undulating scale, access and focal points. Like the facade of a city, the topography of mediation subtly relinquishes its meaning to the unwitting passerby. Steve Seid Judith Barry's MATRIX installation, Maelstrom: Max Laughs, runs May 17 through July 2.