When husband and wife, Stephan Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen, went snorkeling a couple of years ago, they realized how dependent they were on one another. They had to share the same oxygen tank in order to survive.

For the two associate professors at Bowling Green State University, this experience gave them the idea for their next video installment project.

“What’s more intimate than sharing air between two people?” Magsamen said. “You didn’t have a sense of time or space.”

While they struggle to classify what exactly they do, both consider themselves video artists in some fashion. Although they may disagree about what to call themselves, they have a united sense of artistry.

“Our art is based more in concept,” Magsamen said. “It talks more about ideas.”

Since they experienced sharing their air with each other, they found another way to share that experience with the outside world. They chewed Bazooka Joe bubble gum, blew bubbles at each other and the bubbles consumed each other, becoming one. This piece is called “Air Hunger.”

When shown at one of their gallery showings, they heard a young girl, say “‘Ew, they’re sharing the same gum,'” Magsamen imitated.

In their line of work, they use video installations. The video portions are only one to two minutes.

With their “Air Hunger” piece, they taped two videos. One of the bubbles connecting and the other of the two blowing bubbles independently from each other. This is called a two-channel video installment. They will project both videos simultaneously on the same wall.

“It’s as simple as a movie theatre,” Hillerbrand said. “It’s like using the space in an art gallery or museum.”

Another piece, “Earth Hunger,” is a three-channel installment based on TV reality programs such as “The Amazing Race” where they video taped the action in the cornfields of Bowling Green. One installment was of Team Stephan, the other of Team Mary and the third is the both of them running together.

“A person off the street would say, ‘I don’t get it,'” Magsamen said. “We choose topics and metaphors with multiple levels of interpretation.”

With these two video pieces, they received a $5,000 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council in the media arts category. This award reflects their work from the past couple of years.

Hillerbrand will go to Berlin and Karlsruhe, Germany for a six week seminar because he received the Fulbright Junior Research Award.

He will do his own work in the area of the long history of art and research the “question: how does society treat all of this, how does it inform us and does it empower us?” he said.

Hillerbrand is an associate professor of visual communication and Magsamen is an associate professor of fine arts, but they are able to effectively capture their endless array of creative ideas with each other.

They were driving in New York, where they once lived, and Magsamen spit her gum out of the window, but the side of the car caught it. She turned to Hillerbrand saying it looked like a naked person. Hillerbrand immediately took out his camera and filmed it.

“We have to shoot this for prosperity,” he said at the time.

He was right in context. They showed this piece to a gallery and Magsamen said a little girl thought it looked like “Superpopcorn.”

“We’re always 100 percent on,” Hillerbrand said.

He recalled another time when they were eating ice cream with their two and a half year old daughter and Magsamen commented on how pretty the sprinkles were.

“What’s exciting,” Hillerbrand said about his inspirations, “is that it’s everyday. It comes right at the beginning, in the morning. We poured the milk in to our coffee. It’s an everyday occurrence.”

This daily ritual became their current idea for a video installment project. They took two huge fish tanks, one filled with coffee and another filled with milk. The camera was set up underneath the tank. Hillerbrand sipped milk into his mouth and spewed the milk into the coffee tank. Magsamen spewed coffee into the milk tank.

In the photographs taken, Hillerbrand’s milk design in the coffee was more obvious than Magsamen’s coffee in the milk.

“Milk floats to the bottom and the coffee stays on top,” Magsamen said. “It stays separated. I put a lot of coffee in it, too. My hair would fall into it.”

Most of their work is accompanied by photographs, Hillerbrand said.

“Photography and video are brother and sister with different personalities.”

Most of their work is done in their garage. They have their lights, cameras and computers set up in a makeshift studio.

They use a video camera with a flip-out screen. They are able to hook it up to the lap top to digitally manipulate the video to their liking.

“Working with technology,” Hillerbrand said, “you have to be really good at what you do to be able to show someone that it looks very simple.”