It's a staging that feels, if not inappropriate, then at least a little unconventional: I'm seated in front of my laptop in the living room of my East Vancouver home, trying (and mostly failing) to ward off the September cold creeping up through the floorboards. On my screen, streamed in from a home office in San Diego, California, is Ricardo Dominguez, one of North America's most wildly experimental and most deeply politicized media artists.

My microphone malfunctions, my Internet connection wavers, and my flimsy earbuds crackle. But all the same, Dominguez' cavernous baritone vibrates across the pixelated static that separates us, asserting his "presence" with a startling authority.