Photos & Review of People Doing Strange Things with Electricity II @
CoCA
This past Saturday, Jan. 22, the Center on Contemporary Art
(CoCA) held the second annual exhibition of interactive, electric, art
sponsored by the Seattle chapter of Dorkbot (dorkbot-sea). The dorkbot motto is "People
Doing Strange Things with Electricity," and this second art exhibition featuring
the electric and interactive work of 32 artists is tltled "People Doing Strange Things with Electricity
II." This entry captures the flavor of the opening night ceremonies,
which coincided with the release of a two-album CD containing the electronic and
experimental compositions of 25 sound artists and musicians, appropriately
titled "People Doing Strange Things with Electricity
TOO."
It should go without saying that a digital still image cannot capture the true effect of interactive or electric art and these pictures don't come close to providing a full experience for the exhibition, which runs through March 3 at COCA's 410 Dexter Avenue, Seattle, gallery. The opening night event was spectacular. COCA was completely filled, I've not seen it this full - ever. There was a mad flurry of activity preceding the opening as the previous exhibits had to be removed, walls changed, new walls put up, electricity routed and the actual exhibits installed. Nearly all of them are "active," in that they move, have an audio or video or both component or involve the audience in some manner. Approximately half of them are truly interactive in that they don't "work" unless there is participation. The dorkbot organization is a collaborative group of individuals in (now) 22 cities scattered throughout the world. A dorkbot experiments with technology, art, the social process, and explores the realm which involves technology and art, the artist and the public. The dorkbot organizations also provide collaboration for those seeking the use of technology in art and for those trying to find the art in technology. It's heavily involved in robotics and electro-mechanical/optical/auditory/tactile systems and the exploration of that entire realm.
The exhibit covers the gamut from sound to touch and includes a large number of artworks which don't really work until there are people involved. It's a stunning exhibition and anyone in Seattle for the period from now through March 3 should check it out - COCA's hours are 2:00 to 8:00 pm Tuesday through Thursday and noon through 5:00 pm Friday through Sunday.
It should go without saying that a digital still image cannot capture the true effect of interactive or electric art and these pictures don't come close to providing a full experience for the exhibition, which runs through March 3 at COCA's 410 Dexter Avenue, Seattle, gallery. The opening night event was spectacular. COCA was completely filled, I've not seen it this full - ever. There was a mad flurry of activity preceding the opening as the previous exhibits had to be removed, walls changed, new walls put up, electricity routed and the actual exhibits installed. Nearly all of them are "active," in that they move, have an audio or video or both component or involve the audience in some manner. Approximately half of them are truly interactive in that they don't "work" unless there is participation. The dorkbot organization is a collaborative group of individuals in (now) 22 cities scattered throughout the world. A dorkbot experiments with technology, art, the social process, and explores the realm which involves technology and art, the artist and the public. The dorkbot organizations also provide collaboration for those seeking the use of technology in art and for those trying to find the art in technology. It's heavily involved in robotics and electro-mechanical/optical/auditory/tactile systems and the exploration of that entire realm.
The exhibit covers the gamut from sound to touch and includes a large number of artworks which don't really work until there are people involved. It's a stunning exhibition and anyone in Seattle for the period from now through March 3 should check it out - COCA's hours are 2:00 to 8:00 pm Tuesday through Thursday and noon through 5:00 pm Friday through Sunday.
The COCA space is not that large and the 32 works
of art were spread throughout the gallery space in the front area on both sides,
in the back gallery, in the floor space in both areas with two works also set
upstairs in the lounge area (opposite side of stairs from the CoCA
office).
I've broken the images down into two groups. The first group of pictures captures the overall "feel" of the event and are either single shots showing off an entire gallery area or are panorama shots showing a major section of a gallery area. The lighting was relatively good for indoor, hand-held, digital photography but some of the areas were dark by necessity so photos of those areas will show some digital noise based on significant post-image-taking Photoshop processing. The second group of images feature individual works and, where appropriate, have links to the artist's home page or other reference information about the art itself.
General Scenes from dorkbot-sea's People Doing Strange Things with Electricity II opening at CoCA
Outside and across Dexter Avenue from CoCA's gallery. Opening ceremony was 8:00 pm
Saturday night and by 8:30 pm there was a line about a dozen deep for folks waiting to
get inside.
Once inside the scene was elbow-to-elbow with visitors, art patrons, CoCA members and
the exhibiting artists mingling and moving. The opening ran through midnight with an
opening night celebration after-hours party continuing through 2:00 am at Consolidated
Works and featuring a variety of electronic musician-DJ's.
Immediately inside the main entrance and opposite the entry desk and wall containing Cathy McClure and Seth Sexton's work
"Disassembly Line" (on the wall with the nine video monitors). The pair collaborate and are known as SID.
Looking straight back from the entrance. On the left is Ellen Ziegler's untitled art which
consisted of a series of hand-made paper sheets which had been etched using a high-voltage
electric arc stylis and intermingled with other pieces of photosensitive paper which had been
exposed to ultraviolet light.
Looking down from the top of the stairs to the CoCA lounge and office areas. On the left is the collaborative and interactive work by
Iole Alessandrini and Ed Mannery called "Threshold." This work, using the green laser and the white wall below it serves as a
"gateway" between the two gallery spaces and highlights the act of "passing through." Below center is the Ocean Design
Collaborative's Nano-City and hanging on the right is Ginny Ruffner's "How Y Became RGB" interactive work. The doorway
slightly left-of-center led to S. Lyn Goeringer's interactive aural work called "tone. stop. The intersection of two sound lines. E."
The back gallery with Dr. Donald C. Martin's "Quantum Atom" on the immediate left, the lit linear tube next to it is Matt Stiger's untitled
interactive neon and glass work, the globe in front is Scott Gasparian's "Orbitron", the red LED walls behind is Eric McNeill's work
titled "Untitled (Portrait/Movement). The crowd is standing in front of several more works on the right side and the hanging cube
is another work by Scott Gasparian called "DC3."
No opening night would be complete without appropriate music and so this is the DJ
table where DjMb and Carlos Miguel were working live to create an electronic background
as well as featuring tracks from the CD also released in conjuction with the opening and
featuring 25 musicians and electronic audio artists - "People Doing Strange Things with
Electricity, Too." The album and all individual tracks are available for free download
at Seattle's Comfort Records website.
Photos showing the individual work of the artists exhibiting at People Doing Strange Things with Electricity II
Iola Alessandrini's work "Threshold" is shown here. It uses two green
lasers at the corner of two openings from this area into the back gallery
and shows on the screen a moving image of a person. The artwork
conceptualizes the act of entering the second gallery from the main area.
She says that she uses light, digital media and physical space to create
ephemeral environments that people enter rather than observe. For this
work, Iola collaborated with Ed Mannery.
John Bain's "Cubist Mirror" artwork which was in a separate very small room-gallery
off the main gallery area. The work uses nine digital cameras mounted at the top and
bottom of the video screen to capture the image of someone standing in front. The images
are then shown on the screen based on which camera sees movement. If one stands and
moves rapidly there is a flash of nine images all appearing on the screen and
representing a different perspective. Bain says that it's a space and time mirror which allows
someone to see different angled views of themselves. He says he tries to create new
purposes for digital technology which are completely different from the purpose for which
the device was originally intended. John Bain along with Mark Bain is a collaborator with
the Mutant Data Orchestra as well.
Mark Bain's Omnisound Generator which uses pneumatic pumps to
create a sound pressure wave which contains all seven octaves - 84
discrete tonalities. It is "one incessant chord" and represents the history
of Western music. The earpiece is a pneumatic earphone - similar to
the stethoscope. Bain says he works at the intersection of acoustics,
architecture and their experimental integration and has been involved
in ongoing research into the acoustics of places and the conditions that
acoustic reality sets for either the place or the occupants. Mark Bain
along with John Bain are also collaborators with the Mutant Data Orchestra.
I did not get a picture of University of Washington professor William Beatty's "Pond Machine" which was
a kinetic sculpture and attempts to expose the deep and multi-level esthetics behind mundane objects, in
this case water. Nor did I get a picture of retired UW research scientist Doug Bell's "7 Segment Array" which
uses 27 rows of 44 displays each linked through 18 microcomputer circuits and which then light the arrays
as they are communicating with each other. You can read about William Beatty's artwork and Doug Bell's artwork
at the dorkbot-sea site.
Two images of Michele Boland's "Zundlephone." That's Michele in the black gown on the left. The Zundlephone uses a visual display
(see display image on right) to solicit words or sounds from the participant, who speaks into the microphone. Once the patron has
spoken following the visual display, the Zundlephone then plays back a musical piece incorporating some regular musical themes
and mixing them with atonal sounds created by using the recorded voice or noises of the participant. The speakers are the
white round objects on the left (flash photo) - when the system is not being flash-photographed, the speakers glow blue.
Image of Scott Gasparian's "OrbiTron" in one of its moods. It's a
computer-controlled set of super-bright LEDs mounted, along with
the computer, inside a translucent sphere and powered by a sewing
machine engine. The motor turns the platform so fast that the light from
the computer-modulated and constantly-changing LEDs blends into a
rotating sphere of colored light reminiscent of the bands of Jupiter. He
got shocked when he was four years old and liked the experience (sounds
like me) and has been creating artwork out of discarded parts for
years now.
Two images of another Scott Gasparian artwork in CoCA's back gallery area. This one is called DC3, which
stands for Dilithium Crystal Containment Chamber. It's a cube consisting of six pyrex Fresnel lenses
surrounding a core which contains a crystal of quartz doped with di-lithium. On each of the six Fresnel faces
are capacitance sensors which feed a set of photonic stimulators (LEDs? lasers?) which are aimed at the
Li2 crystal and which excite it to glow in a wild and varying variety of colors. Trés interactive and eye-catching.
Two views into S. Lyn Goeringer's electronic sound installation for separate room entitled "tone. stop. The
intersection of two sound lines. E." The entry into the roughly eight-by-twelve-foot room is the black rectangle
in the photo in the upper left. There were miniature Bose speakers set up at above-head height in the four
corners of the room and on the floor by the door and there were two wires suspended from the walls opposite
the entry and at the rear of the room. The speakers play a recorded soundscape in five channels which the
listeners then hear as a mixed noise as it combines with the noises from the rest of the gallery outside the -
apparently - acoustically transparent walls. The wires on the wall appear to vary the volume of one or more
of the recorded soundscape channels.
The pictures of S. Lyn Goeringer's acoustic environment shown in the images
above this one were taken with flash. This image shows the room in its
natural state. The environment itself was a warm, dark, sonically
rich environment and this image shows more of what it was really like.
A view of Ronald Lambert's "Toward a Possible Bliss" combination of
ancient automatic record changing machine with embedded LCD video
player. Lambert is exploring the relationship between electronic
equipment and nostalgia and the experience of the sublime. He recorded
his own version of "When You're Smiling" and that recording along with
a saturated video recording of flowers begins to play when the participant
puts the needle on the record. When the record is finished, the arm automatically
returns to its rest and the audio and video stop.
Another Ronald Lambert sublime interactive exhibit is "Intravital," shown above.
In this piece Lambert is exploring the relationship between the physical and the psychological.
A video projector shines down and projects images of water rippling down onto large Petri
dishes. He is using water because it is "not us" but we are made from it and it is both a
pleasing and threatening element of our existence. Lambert's works, although clearly
interactive in every sense, are actually much more contemplative.
These are some of artist Seth Lewis's SRI team. SRI stands for Sensory Reality Interface. As
an artist Lewis says that he's exploring the relationship between artist and patron and that the
sense of touch, to him, is the most powerful way to link things. In these devices, comprised
of internally-lit plastic cast moldings of human fingers sticking out of all sides of an amorphous
metal body, the sense of touch is explored because these SRI surrogates move about and
explore their environment and interact with patrons. They are powered by hand vibrators
attached to the back of the amorphous body such that their motion is completely random,
causing them to appear to "walk" on these fingers, which participants can touch back - pushing
the SRI agent in another direction. There were - I believe - eight of these tethered artist agents
in the back gallery crawling and exploring all around the floor.
I did not get a picture of Line-Up Collaborative's "Here's Looking At You" instant photo booth. The photo booth looks
like any found at amusement parks or in malls and works the same way except that the image taken of the person sitting
on the booth stool is not taken with the camera the person looks at - rather it's taken from a hidden camera in the top corner
of the booth. The Line-Up Collaborative is Marcin Balicki, Amelia Bauer & Robert de Saint Phalle, all from Seattle.
You can see their booth and read more about the artwork at the dorkbot-sea site.
I also did not get a picture of LoVid's "CoAdNe" and "CoDeAn" interactive soft-fabric sound-emitting sculptures.
Their sculptures represent a form of "media" dolls. The fabric is a patchwork of quilts made from transferred video-to-cloth
material and inside each sculpture is a sound chip which emits grunts and squeaks from an electronic primordial past.
LoVid are Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. They are also performance artists who've toured both the US and Europe extensively.
More about their COCA exhibit artwork can be seen and read at the dorkbot-sea site.
Artist M's "Bodhi" is a lightbox of proprietary design which the artist originally created to
display poetry but added photographs as well. The poetry glows, almost as if suspended
outside the box. It's a proprietary design, the artist is somewhat mysterious, as well, but can
be contacted at m@seapod.net. Whatever his or her unique design, it works. The
interactive element comes from looking at the poetry and images at different angles and seeing
different levels of image and poetry.
This is Laura MacCary's interactive electronic woven artwork titled "Dialectric: Connection."
She's a weaver studying electronics. Her father, Lawrence MacCary, is a sculptor and
electronics experimenter and collaborated with Laura on this work. The artwork is a set of
threads, including conductive non-insulated wire woven into the fabric. The conductive wire
is threaded out the top of the fabric to the LED box at the top of the image. Each of the squarish
patches on the fabric correspond to one of the LEDs in a matrix mimicking the square patterns
of the fabric. Running one's hand or finger over the fabric will light the appropriate LEDs on the
display above. Although really simple in concept and elegant in execution, this artwork was
soliciting an endless array of fingers and hands running over the fabric - which was soft in
contrast to the embedded wires, which were pliable but definitely tangible.
I did not get a picture of Lawrence MacCary's exhibit at CoCA, entitled "Plutarch," but you can read about it and see a picture
of it at the dorkbot-sea site. According to Lawrence, Plutarch is a woven, interactive, sculpture which, if touched, will wail and
otherwise let the participant know that the art either likes or doesn't like the touching.
Picture of Donald C. Martin's "Quantum Atom." This is a lightbox
visual sculpture using specially created dice motifs by Martin and
incorporating a plasma-discharge pane. Martin has a fascinating academic
history which includes physics, psychology, statistics, electrical and
mechanical engineering and a prior love of and talent for photography.
He's another former UW professor and this artwork represents his fascination
with both M.C. Escher's drawings and Neils Bohr' s theories of quantum
interaction along with Albert Einstein's comments to Bohr that God doesn't
play Dice with the Universe. Putting this all together, Martin has created
a visual sculpture which has Escher-like dice and a central, interactive,
plasma display which demonstrates the random nature of the quantum states
of atoms. Touch the screen and you change the quantum state - the plasma
finds a new path. More about Martin's intriguing artistic viewpoint is at the
dorkbot-sea site.
Two separate images of Eric McNeill's "Untitled (Portrait/Movement)" six-foot square wall art. McNeill says
he's been interested in how technology can provide insight into and reflection upon human emotion. The
artwork itself is an interesting deconstruction of an event. He has a looping video which shows an individual
walking along a wall, pausing, looking back, and continuing on. This video is translated out through an interface
to work with 256 large-scale LEDs arrayed in a 16x16 matrix. From a distance one can finally discern that there
is a person walking across a red wall. Up close there is only an occasional motion of darkness which waves
across the LEDs. McNeill says that for several years he's been trying to work on pieces which distill down to
the essential and elementary elements the concept or emotion. In this artwork, the emotion is represented by
the person "walking" across the LEDs and the reduction in data (or distillation process) is in the algorithm which
takes the video output (480x330 pixels nominally for NTSC television) and down-converts it to 16x16 "pixels."
Two views taken from the same location showing a different "time" for the OdescO exhibit "Nano-City." OdescO
is an acronym which stands for Ocean Design Collaborative. It is an architectural firm located in Venice, California,
and is comprised of Michael Fox, Juintow Lin, and Andrew Todd. For this work of art/architecture, OdescO
collaborated with Axel Kilian . The concept behind this is that of a "Nano-City" which is a real city which continually
remakes itself moving across the landscape and leaving the resources intact. Nano machines create and deconstruct
while the humans continually move since the city is physically evolving. To show the concept in action, OdescO uses
a robotic system to reposition magnetic spinning devices beneath a pool of ferrofluid in which are located small spinner
objects, which when activated by the magnets, create a larger, outward spiral in the fluid - representing the "new city."
Notice the larger object in the center-left of the left photo and then look at the top-left of the right photo to see an example
of the Nano-City moving along. The ferrofluid represents the resources, which in the concept of the Nano-City, are used
and then restored. Conceptually this is fascinating stuff and the representation of the concept with a physical model
is a true work of art. (also see below)
In order to fully appreciate the conceptualization which Nano-City demonstrates, OdescO
have a concept paper on a plaque near the ferrofluid pool. The concept itself is based on
the Italian architectural group Superstudio and a 1960's paper entitled "Seventh City: Continuous
Production Conveyor Belt City." In that original, somewhat pessimistic, representation of the
voracious appetite of the urban lifestyle, the Italians imagined a city continually renewing
itself with the residents in a constant state of vying for the newest sections and everything
being in a constant state of flux. The OdescO team has taken a more positive spin on the
concept.
A view looking along the long side of Christopher O'Dowd's untitled
terrarium containing a collection of BEAMs - Biological Artistic Electrical
Mechanical robots (yes, the letters are backwards for the acronym - artistic
license!). A BEAM is a solar-panel-powered mechanical robot. Each
BEAM has an onboard logic circuit which dictates how the mechanical activators
it has will work and how it will react when encountering an object or another
BEAM. The entirety of the terrarium is a closed ecosystem with the human
observers becoming part of that ecosystem through their curiosity as to the
behavior of the robot insects. The interactive component is based on the
simple fact that only when people are near the terrarium does a motion
detector activate the halogen lights which provide power (life) to the BEAMs.
Christopher is the youngest artist exhibiting at CoCA for the dorkbot-sea show -
he's a junior at Center School here in Seattle. Read more about Christopher
at the dorkbot-sea site.
A closeup of Toby Paddock's oddly titled "IMUF_008 - Impractical Methods for Unneeded
Functions #8 aka 4x4x4 Little Neon Blink-O-Grid" technical artwork at the CoCA exhibit.
The non-interactive but thoroughly entertaining work uses a network of slow-firing neon
bulbs to time an interconnected matrix network of fast-firing miniature neon tubes. The work
has four levels of grid circuitry - you're looking through all four layers here - with interconnects
between the grids consisting of the slow-blinking neons. Once a circuit path is completed, the
fast-blinking neon bulbs light. The entire work consists of a series of - not quite random but
not quite programmed - slow and fast neon tubes blinking on and off - slowly and rapidly.
Paddock is a tinkerer who creates works like these and also dabbles in sound synthesis. The
process at work here involves technologies more than 50 years old. The construction of the
levels of circuitry on this work are a form of technical art in their own right.
These are two different views of Quasi Cause's "BlowHard: Respiring the Rhetoric of Fear" completely interactive work.
Quasi-Cause is an interesting collaborative entity itself, consisting of Sky Frostenson and Ryan Schoelerman, both of
whom are multimedia electronic designer-artists who have further collaborations with other organizations. Quasi-Cause
(full name is Quasi-Cause Heavy Media Industries) has a number of existing multimedia interactive works, Blowhard
being the one they showed at CoCA. The collaborative's mission statement says they're trying to assist in fighting
back against a continuing corporate hegemony and intrusion into our lives. Blowhard works on several different levels.
It's a technological toy, it's an interactive experiential "event," and it's a sociological warning. The participant picks up
a face mask, which has a CO2 sensor, and breathes into the mask while watching the monitor. As one continues to
breathe, optimally at an increasing intake-outtake rate, the CO2 content rises which is detected and sent to the artwork's
computer which then raises the "threat" level (shown as a green bar on the monitor on the right above) and plays a
captured 1950s "Cold War" video appropriate to the threat level. Ideally, one would compete with another player and
as the participant-contestants continue to breathe heavily and their CO2 levels rises - so does their "fear" level. Eventually
the threat level reaches the top - red zone - and the video shows a nuclear explosion from a 1950s above-ground test.
The work is designed (on many levels) to solicit both participation in and an understanding of how the government
shapes and molds individual and public opinion through propaganda. This exhibit-artwork is engaging and the tact
Quasi-Cause is following serves a powerful purpose and represents a strong statement for art as sociology. Once
you reach the red zone on the threat level (Defcon 4?) the participant is light-headed - which is yet another point of
their exhibition - that the government propaganda machine works to reduce our consciousness through media means.
This is Peter Reiquam's "Disorient Expess." It might not be obvious, but there's an engine
and caboose attached to the end of the centrifuge arm. The work, which is interactive by
only working if the participant inserts a quarter into a wall-mounted coin-activator mechanism,
is simple while being bizarrely engaging. Once the quarter is inserted, the belt-connected
motor-driven centrifuge arm swings around moving the train on the trestle track at such
a speed that it becomes invisible. The entire experience lasts about 20 seconds, from
insertion of quarter to full spin-up to relatively quick stop. Reiquam was on the King County
Public Art Commission for six years and is heavily involved in Seattle's Public Art Program.
His "day" job is that of a public space artist who's worked with a variety of transit systems.
Disorient Express is both a "public art" in that trestles are part of the public infrastructure and
a mechanical sculpture. More on Reiquam's approach and art philosophy at dorkbot-sea.
This is Olivia Robinson's "Imbalanced Ambivilance" interactive work. The work, which only begins if someone turns
the crank, shows a nurse and a patient "interacting" through clever splicing of two separate videos of a nurse getting
into her uniform and a patient waiting. When the crank stops, the video fades; when the crank is turned, the video starts
to move again. Robinson used her own accordian music to accompany the LCD video. She is a graduate of two fine
Eastern institutions (Maryland Institute College of Art and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and has BFA and MFA degrees.
As an artist, she believes that art bridges the distance between strangers and enables personal and trusting contact and
relationships. The crank in her Imbalanced Ambivilance artwork is the non-threatening invitation to strangers to
participate and engage. This is art as therapy. She explains how she came to this approach at the dorkbot-sea site.
A view of the top half of Ginny Ruffner's wonderful interactive video installation "How Y
became RGB." The chandelier contains hand-blown glass ornaments, video monitors, and
two video cameras. Below the chandelier is a table with mirrors which show the monitors
and chandelier above. The video cameras are aimed at the mirror and when one inserts
a hand or head over the mirrored-table, the images respond accordingly. It's confusing and
engaging simultaneously because it's not apparent how the two are connected. Part of the
mystery and intrigue in this work is Ruffner's use of black-and-white video - hence the title,
"How Y became RGB." In television, the color information (RGB) is encoded separately from
the luminance information (Y). In Ruffner's art work here the color component - the live
interacting participant - becomes black and white. Because her work uses mirrors, the inversion
is both clever and subtle. The black-and-white images are incorporated into the monitors
in the quite colorful (RGB) chandelier and reflected back again at the participant's mirror end.
This is Andrew Sempere's "GrassHappy: Growing Pet for Improved Happiness!" This is one
complex work of art, fitting because of Sempere's personal philosophy about the use of
technology - he thinks we shouldn't forget how to appreciate the simple pleasures simply because
technology can make our lives easier or more efficient. The grass is intended to be stroked.
The light under the glass starts purple and the more one strokes the grass the greener the
light becomes - indicating that the grass is "happy." The LCD screen shows how long the
grass has been stroked (it resets after a non-stroke period of about half a minute). What
Sempere is saying here is that we need to take time out to enjoy the simple things and that in
so doing we regain a sense of appreciation - happiness. He's an artist and instructor at MIT
with degrees in art from the Art Institute of Chicago and science from MIT.
Looking at the video monitor lineup which is SID's "Disassembly Line" artwork. SID (Sound
Industrial Design) is Cathy McClure and Seth Sexton. This work shows a form of
deconstruction. The exhibit is trying to show how we've become a society of mass-produced
"stuff" consumers and quickly discard the old for the new. They've taken the plush, soft,
covering off of a battery-powered robot dog and video-taped the dog walking across a plane.
Each of the monitors shows the dog-robot in successive moves across the plane. The line
of monitors represents the assembly line in mass-production factories and the deconstructed
robot-dog pet represents the underlying and quickly replaceable product of the production line.
Art as social critic showing us how consumption-driven our society has become.
Two different close-up views of Matt Stiger's untitled interactive neon work. The work is a tall tube containing
neon and an indeterminate material inside. By touching the roughly five-foot high tube the participant changes
both the shape of and the color of the wandering plasma. Sitting by itself it undulates apparently on its own,
soliciting the participant to put their hand on the tube - at which point the colors and shape change. Stiger says
he's inspired by beautiful natural items such as coral and his art tries to solicit that inspiration in others, read
more on his art philosophy at the dorkbot-sea site.
A transient image of Edward Tang's presentation "Threads://Porn-Personals.html" which
uses custom software to present an artistic statement about our sex-driven lives and society.
The computer-driven system has a stored set of video clips from an adult video. The software
connects to a live adult personals site and parses the messages, extracting specific key words
which are then presented on the monitor along with sections of the video clip in a 3D format
where the words and images move back and forth as if across different planes of space.
Because the system uses live data it is always changing and presenting a new abstract 3D
view of the intersection of desire and availability. The video is analyzed with respect to each
new message on a color pixel-by-pixel basis and then presented as an abstract 3D shape
behind the abstracted key words. More on the software is at the dorkbot-sea site. Tang
writes his own software and for this work he collaborated with Jeanne Strohl.
A view of W. Scott Trimble's elaborate, complicated and engaging work "Moving Pictures."
The participant pushes a "start" button and the system begins to move four separate panes of
glass across an arc. The viewer looks through the frame and sees a constantly changing "picture"
created by the interception of the four planes, each of which has been marked with different designs
and visual elements. His art philosophy includes inviting the participant into the process of creation,
deconstruction and appreciation. See more images below.
A sample from "Moving Pictures" of what appears through the frame. Because each of the
four glass panes has a different set of drawings and art, the scene changes continuously,
allowing the viewer to participate in the act of art creation.
Looking from the perspective of W. Scott Trimble's "Moving Pictures," this is how the viewer
appears on the other side of the frame. Trimble says he's motivated by the contrast between
nature and machine, between industry and individual figure and was strongly influenced by
his youth near Yosemite National Park and the appearance nearby of decaying machines.
His principal expression as an artist is in the metal fabricating and machine invention area.
Three views of Ryan Wolfe's "Sketch of a field of grass, Pacific Coast 2004." This is a fascinating work of art
and explores Wolfe's philosophy that a memorable time, place, or experience can be condensed into a
singular physical object which captures the essence of the memorable qualities of the experience. More on
his philosophy is at the dorkbot-sea site. In this piece, the memorable experience is being at a Pacific Ocean
beach with the slow wafting back and forth of sea reed grasses on the shoreline. To capture this essential quality
Wolfe has recorded the sound of the wind at that beach and used the undulating wave-like quality of that
sound capture to embed a flash ROM chip with the waveform. That waveform drives a circuit connected to
a selsyn motor, which in turn has a blade of sea grass attached to its armature. The result is that the individual
circuit-motor-grass blade sets (there are seven of them) undulate and wave back and forth exactly like real
blades of sea grass at a beach. Because the motion is controlled by actual wind noise the undulating motion is
as realistic and random as if there really were wind moving the grass blades. The system is entirely silent,
adding to the capture of the actual event - no motor noise - and the simulated wind is slow enough that one
wouldn't expect to hear any whistling from the wind.
Ellen Ziegler's untitled work using hand-made paper, electric arc drawing and ultraviolet light photographic
impressions is shown obliquely at the beginning of this series (the fourth image down). A better image and
description is also available at the dorkbot-sea site.
The Center on Contemporary Art and dorkbot-sea are to be complimented for this outstanding exhibition, as
are all the participating artists. Remember also that there is a concurrent release of electronic music and
experimental sounds which goes with the exhibit - People Doing Strange Things with Electricity Too. The
music is available for free download as individual songs or as the entire two-CD album from Seattle-based
net label Comfort Stand Records. Kate Seekings and Otis Fodder produced the album and Kate Seekings
curated the exhibition and are certainly owed a huge hand and congratulations for bringing such a fantastic
set of art and musical experiences to the public. The exhibition remains at CoCA's 410 Dexter Avenue N
gallery through March 3, 2005. This is easily worth several hours of your time and I can't encourage you
enough to go see these works and listen to (or download or both) the music.
[ Nota Bene -
The Center on
Contemporary Art has a generous policy regarding photography of work
appearing
in the gallery. That notwithstanding, these photographs showing individual works are, in fact, showing copyrighted
and/or patented works by the authors and their collaborators (as appropriate). These works are being shown in the public
domain but they are not, themselves, IN the public domain. I say this for anyone wishing to use these photographs and
request that they respect the artistic rights of the artists and their collaborators by including the artist's name, the title of the
work of art and the fact that it is copyrighted by the artist. The contents of this site (chasBlog) are covered by a
Creative Commons license which requests but does not require attribution.]
I've broken the images down into two groups. The first group of pictures captures the overall "feel" of the event and are either single shots showing off an entire gallery area or are panorama shots showing a major section of a gallery area. The lighting was relatively good for indoor, hand-held, digital photography but some of the areas were dark by necessity so photos of those areas will show some digital noise based on significant post-image-taking Photoshop processing. The second group of images feature individual works and, where appropriate, have links to the artist's home page or other reference information about the art itself.
General Scenes from dorkbot-sea's People Doing Strange Things with Electricity II opening at CoCA
Outside and across Dexter Avenue from CoCA's gallery. Opening ceremony was 8:00 pm
Saturday night and by 8:30 pm there was a line about a dozen deep for folks waiting to
get inside.
Once inside the scene was elbow-to-elbow with visitors, art patrons, CoCA members and
the exhibiting artists mingling and moving. The opening ran through midnight with an
opening night celebration after-hours party continuing through 2:00 am at Consolidated
Works and featuring a variety of electronic musician-DJ's.
Immediately inside the main entrance and opposite the entry desk and wall containing Cathy McClure and Seth Sexton's work
"Disassembly Line" (on the wall with the nine video monitors). The pair collaborate and are known as SID.
Looking straight back from the entrance. On the left is Ellen Ziegler's untitled art which
consisted of a series of hand-made paper sheets which had been etched using a high-voltage
electric arc stylis and intermingled with other pieces of photosensitive paper which had been
exposed to ultraviolet light.
Looking down from the top of the stairs to the CoCA lounge and office areas. On the left is the collaborative and interactive work by
Iole Alessandrini and Ed Mannery called "Threshold." This work, using the green laser and the white wall below it serves as a
"gateway" between the two gallery spaces and highlights the act of "passing through." Below center is the Ocean Design
Collaborative's Nano-City and hanging on the right is Ginny Ruffner's "How Y Became RGB" interactive work. The doorway
slightly left-of-center led to S. Lyn Goeringer's interactive aural work called "tone. stop. The intersection of two sound lines. E."
The back gallery with Dr. Donald C. Martin's "Quantum Atom" on the immediate left, the lit linear tube next to it is Matt Stiger's untitled
interactive neon and glass work, the globe in front is Scott Gasparian's "Orbitron", the red LED walls behind is Eric McNeill's work
titled "Untitled (Portrait/Movement). The crowd is standing in front of several more works on the right side and the hanging cube
is another work by Scott Gasparian called "DC3."
No opening night would be complete without appropriate music and so this is the DJ
table where DjMb and Carlos Miguel were working live to create an electronic background
as well as featuring tracks from the CD also released in conjuction with the opening and
featuring 25 musicians and electronic audio artists - "People Doing Strange Things with
Electricity, Too." The album and all individual tracks are available for free download
at Seattle's Comfort Records website.
Photos showing the individual work of the artists exhibiting at People Doing Strange Things with Electricity II
Iola Alessandrini's work "Threshold" is shown here. It uses two green
lasers at the corner of two openings from this area into the back gallery
and shows on the screen a moving image of a person. The artwork
conceptualizes the act of entering the second gallery from the main area.
She says that she uses light, digital media and physical space to create
ephemeral environments that people enter rather than observe. For this
work, Iola collaborated with Ed Mannery.
John Bain's "Cubist Mirror" artwork which was in a separate very small room-gallery
off the main gallery area. The work uses nine digital cameras mounted at the top and
bottom of the video screen to capture the image of someone standing in front. The images
are then shown on the screen based on which camera sees movement. If one stands and
moves rapidly there is a flash of nine images all appearing on the screen and
representing a different perspective. Bain says that it's a space and time mirror which allows
someone to see different angled views of themselves. He says he tries to create new
purposes for digital technology which are completely different from the purpose for which
the device was originally intended. John Bain along with Mark Bain is a collaborator with
the Mutant Data Orchestra as well.
Mark Bain's Omnisound Generator which uses pneumatic pumps to
create a sound pressure wave which contains all seven octaves - 84
discrete tonalities. It is "one incessant chord" and represents the history
of Western music. The earpiece is a pneumatic earphone - similar to
the stethoscope. Bain says he works at the intersection of acoustics,
architecture and their experimental integration and has been involved
in ongoing research into the acoustics of places and the conditions that
acoustic reality sets for either the place or the occupants. Mark Bain
along with John Bain are also collaborators with the Mutant Data Orchestra.
I did not get a picture of University of Washington professor William Beatty's "Pond Machine" which was
a kinetic sculpture and attempts to expose the deep and multi-level esthetics behind mundane objects, in
this case water. Nor did I get a picture of retired UW research scientist Doug Bell's "7 Segment Array" which
uses 27 rows of 44 displays each linked through 18 microcomputer circuits and which then light the arrays
as they are communicating with each other. You can read about William Beatty's artwork and Doug Bell's artwork
at the dorkbot-sea site.
Two images of Michele Boland's "Zundlephone." That's Michele in the black gown on the left. The Zundlephone uses a visual display
(see display image on right) to solicit words or sounds from the participant, who speaks into the microphone. Once the patron has
spoken following the visual display, the Zundlephone then plays back a musical piece incorporating some regular musical themes
and mixing them with atonal sounds created by using the recorded voice or noises of the participant. The speakers are the
white round objects on the left (flash photo) - when the system is not being flash-photographed, the speakers glow blue.
Image of Scott Gasparian's "OrbiTron" in one of its moods. It's a
computer-controlled set of super-bright LEDs mounted, along with
the computer, inside a translucent sphere and powered by a sewing
machine engine. The motor turns the platform so fast that the light from
the computer-modulated and constantly-changing LEDs blends into a
rotating sphere of colored light reminiscent of the bands of Jupiter. He
got shocked when he was four years old and liked the experience (sounds
like me) and has been creating artwork out of discarded parts for
years now.
Two images of another Scott Gasparian artwork in CoCA's back gallery area. This one is called DC3, which
stands for Dilithium Crystal Containment Chamber. It's a cube consisting of six pyrex Fresnel lenses
surrounding a core which contains a crystal of quartz doped with di-lithium. On each of the six Fresnel faces
are capacitance sensors which feed a set of photonic stimulators (LEDs? lasers?) which are aimed at the
Li2 crystal and which excite it to glow in a wild and varying variety of colors. Trés interactive and eye-catching.
Two views into S. Lyn Goeringer's electronic sound installation for separate room entitled "tone. stop. The
intersection of two sound lines. E." The entry into the roughly eight-by-twelve-foot room is the black rectangle
in the photo in the upper left. There were miniature Bose speakers set up at above-head height in the four
corners of the room and on the floor by the door and there were two wires suspended from the walls opposite
the entry and at the rear of the room. The speakers play a recorded soundscape in five channels which the
listeners then hear as a mixed noise as it combines with the noises from the rest of the gallery outside the -
apparently - acoustically transparent walls. The wires on the wall appear to vary the volume of one or more
of the recorded soundscape channels.
The pictures of S. Lyn Goeringer's acoustic environment shown in the images
above this one were taken with flash. This image shows the room in its
natural state. The environment itself was a warm, dark, sonically
rich environment and this image shows more of what it was really like.
A view of Ronald Lambert's "Toward a Possible Bliss" combination of
ancient automatic record changing machine with embedded LCD video
player. Lambert is exploring the relationship between electronic
equipment and nostalgia and the experience of the sublime. He recorded
his own version of "When You're Smiling" and that recording along with
a saturated video recording of flowers begins to play when the participant
puts the needle on the record. When the record is finished, the arm automatically
returns to its rest and the audio and video stop.
Another Ronald Lambert sublime interactive exhibit is "Intravital," shown above.
In this piece Lambert is exploring the relationship between the physical and the psychological.
A video projector shines down and projects images of water rippling down onto large Petri
dishes. He is using water because it is "not us" but we are made from it and it is both a
pleasing and threatening element of our existence. Lambert's works, although clearly
interactive in every sense, are actually much more contemplative.
These are some of artist Seth Lewis's SRI team. SRI stands for Sensory Reality Interface. As
an artist Lewis says that he's exploring the relationship between artist and patron and that the
sense of touch, to him, is the most powerful way to link things. In these devices, comprised
of internally-lit plastic cast moldings of human fingers sticking out of all sides of an amorphous
metal body, the sense of touch is explored because these SRI surrogates move about and
explore their environment and interact with patrons. They are powered by hand vibrators
attached to the back of the amorphous body such that their motion is completely random,
causing them to appear to "walk" on these fingers, which participants can touch back - pushing
the SRI agent in another direction. There were - I believe - eight of these tethered artist agents
in the back gallery crawling and exploring all around the floor.
I did not get a picture of Line-Up Collaborative's "Here's Looking At You" instant photo booth. The photo booth looks
like any found at amusement parks or in malls and works the same way except that the image taken of the person sitting
on the booth stool is not taken with the camera the person looks at - rather it's taken from a hidden camera in the top corner
of the booth. The Line-Up Collaborative is Marcin Balicki, Amelia Bauer & Robert de Saint Phalle, all from Seattle.
You can see their booth and read more about the artwork at the dorkbot-sea site.
I also did not get a picture of LoVid's "CoAdNe" and "CoDeAn" interactive soft-fabric sound-emitting sculptures.
Their sculptures represent a form of "media" dolls. The fabric is a patchwork of quilts made from transferred video-to-cloth
material and inside each sculpture is a sound chip which emits grunts and squeaks from an electronic primordial past.
LoVid are Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. They are also performance artists who've toured both the US and Europe extensively.
More about their COCA exhibit artwork can be seen and read at the dorkbot-sea site.
Artist M's "Bodhi" is a lightbox of proprietary design which the artist originally created to
display poetry but added photographs as well. The poetry glows, almost as if suspended
outside the box. It's a proprietary design, the artist is somewhat mysterious, as well, but can
be contacted at m@seapod.net. Whatever his or her unique design, it works. The
interactive element comes from looking at the poetry and images at different angles and seeing
different levels of image and poetry.
This is Laura MacCary's interactive electronic woven artwork titled "Dialectric: Connection."
She's a weaver studying electronics. Her father, Lawrence MacCary, is a sculptor and
electronics experimenter and collaborated with Laura on this work. The artwork is a set of
threads, including conductive non-insulated wire woven into the fabric. The conductive wire
is threaded out the top of the fabric to the LED box at the top of the image. Each of the squarish
patches on the fabric correspond to one of the LEDs in a matrix mimicking the square patterns
of the fabric. Running one's hand or finger over the fabric will light the appropriate LEDs on the
display above. Although really simple in concept and elegant in execution, this artwork was
soliciting an endless array of fingers and hands running over the fabric - which was soft in
contrast to the embedded wires, which were pliable but definitely tangible.
I did not get a picture of Lawrence MacCary's exhibit at CoCA, entitled "Plutarch," but you can read about it and see a picture
of it at the dorkbot-sea site. According to Lawrence, Plutarch is a woven, interactive, sculpture which, if touched, will wail and
otherwise let the participant know that the art either likes or doesn't like the touching.
Picture of Donald C. Martin's "Quantum Atom." This is a lightbox
visual sculpture using specially created dice motifs by Martin and
incorporating a plasma-discharge pane. Martin has a fascinating academic
history which includes physics, psychology, statistics, electrical and
mechanical engineering and a prior love of and talent for photography.
He's another former UW professor and this artwork represents his fascination
with both M.C. Escher's drawings and Neils Bohr' s theories of quantum
interaction along with Albert Einstein's comments to Bohr that God doesn't
play Dice with the Universe. Putting this all together, Martin has created
a visual sculpture which has Escher-like dice and a central, interactive,
plasma display which demonstrates the random nature of the quantum states
of atoms. Touch the screen and you change the quantum state - the plasma
finds a new path. More about Martin's intriguing artistic viewpoint is at the
dorkbot-sea site.
Two separate images of Eric McNeill's "Untitled (Portrait/Movement)" six-foot square wall art. McNeill says
he's been interested in how technology can provide insight into and reflection upon human emotion. The
artwork itself is an interesting deconstruction of an event. He has a looping video which shows an individual
walking along a wall, pausing, looking back, and continuing on. This video is translated out through an interface
to work with 256 large-scale LEDs arrayed in a 16x16 matrix. From a distance one can finally discern that there
is a person walking across a red wall. Up close there is only an occasional motion of darkness which waves
across the LEDs. McNeill says that for several years he's been trying to work on pieces which distill down to
the essential and elementary elements the concept or emotion. In this artwork, the emotion is represented by
the person "walking" across the LEDs and the reduction in data (or distillation process) is in the algorithm which
takes the video output (480x330 pixels nominally for NTSC television) and down-converts it to 16x16 "pixels."
Two views taken from the same location showing a different "time" for the OdescO exhibit "Nano-City." OdescO
is an acronym which stands for Ocean Design Collaborative. It is an architectural firm located in Venice, California,
and is comprised of Michael Fox, Juintow Lin, and Andrew Todd. For this work of art/architecture, OdescO
collaborated with Axel Kilian . The concept behind this is that of a "Nano-City" which is a real city which continually
remakes itself moving across the landscape and leaving the resources intact. Nano machines create and deconstruct
while the humans continually move since the city is physically evolving. To show the concept in action, OdescO uses
a robotic system to reposition magnetic spinning devices beneath a pool of ferrofluid in which are located small spinner
objects, which when activated by the magnets, create a larger, outward spiral in the fluid - representing the "new city."
Notice the larger object in the center-left of the left photo and then look at the top-left of the right photo to see an example
of the Nano-City moving along. The ferrofluid represents the resources, which in the concept of the Nano-City, are used
and then restored. Conceptually this is fascinating stuff and the representation of the concept with a physical model
is a true work of art. (also see below)
In order to fully appreciate the conceptualization which Nano-City demonstrates, OdescO
have a concept paper on a plaque near the ferrofluid pool. The concept itself is based on
the Italian architectural group Superstudio and a 1960's paper entitled "Seventh City: Continuous
Production Conveyor Belt City." In that original, somewhat pessimistic, representation of the
voracious appetite of the urban lifestyle, the Italians imagined a city continually renewing
itself with the residents in a constant state of vying for the newest sections and everything
being in a constant state of flux. The OdescO team has taken a more positive spin on the
concept.
A view looking along the long side of Christopher O'Dowd's untitled
terrarium containing a collection of BEAMs - Biological Artistic Electrical
Mechanical robots (yes, the letters are backwards for the acronym - artistic
license!). A BEAM is a solar-panel-powered mechanical robot. Each
BEAM has an onboard logic circuit which dictates how the mechanical activators
it has will work and how it will react when encountering an object or another
BEAM. The entirety of the terrarium is a closed ecosystem with the human
observers becoming part of that ecosystem through their curiosity as to the
behavior of the robot insects. The interactive component is based on the
simple fact that only when people are near the terrarium does a motion
detector activate the halogen lights which provide power (life) to the BEAMs.
Christopher is the youngest artist exhibiting at CoCA for the dorkbot-sea show -
he's a junior at Center School here in Seattle. Read more about Christopher
at the dorkbot-sea site.
A closeup of Toby Paddock's oddly titled "IMUF_008 - Impractical Methods for Unneeded
Functions #8 aka 4x4x4 Little Neon Blink-O-Grid" technical artwork at the CoCA exhibit.
The non-interactive but thoroughly entertaining work uses a network of slow-firing neon
bulbs to time an interconnected matrix network of fast-firing miniature neon tubes. The work
has four levels of grid circuitry - you're looking through all four layers here - with interconnects
between the grids consisting of the slow-blinking neons. Once a circuit path is completed, the
fast-blinking neon bulbs light. The entire work consists of a series of - not quite random but
not quite programmed - slow and fast neon tubes blinking on and off - slowly and rapidly.
Paddock is a tinkerer who creates works like these and also dabbles in sound synthesis. The
process at work here involves technologies more than 50 years old. The construction of the
levels of circuitry on this work are a form of technical art in their own right.
These are two different views of Quasi Cause's "BlowHard: Respiring the Rhetoric of Fear" completely interactive work.
Quasi-Cause is an interesting collaborative entity itself, consisting of Sky Frostenson and Ryan Schoelerman, both of
whom are multimedia electronic designer-artists who have further collaborations with other organizations. Quasi-Cause
(full name is Quasi-Cause Heavy Media Industries) has a number of existing multimedia interactive works, Blowhard
being the one they showed at CoCA. The collaborative's mission statement says they're trying to assist in fighting
back against a continuing corporate hegemony and intrusion into our lives. Blowhard works on several different levels.
It's a technological toy, it's an interactive experiential "event," and it's a sociological warning. The participant picks up
a face mask, which has a CO2 sensor, and breathes into the mask while watching the monitor. As one continues to
breathe, optimally at an increasing intake-outtake rate, the CO2 content rises which is detected and sent to the artwork's
computer which then raises the "threat" level (shown as a green bar on the monitor on the right above) and plays a
captured 1950s "Cold War" video appropriate to the threat level. Ideally, one would compete with another player and
as the participant-contestants continue to breathe heavily and their CO2 levels rises - so does their "fear" level. Eventually
the threat level reaches the top - red zone - and the video shows a nuclear explosion from a 1950s above-ground test.
The work is designed (on many levels) to solicit both participation in and an understanding of how the government
shapes and molds individual and public opinion through propaganda. This exhibit-artwork is engaging and the tact
Quasi-Cause is following serves a powerful purpose and represents a strong statement for art as sociology. Once
you reach the red zone on the threat level (Defcon 4?) the participant is light-headed - which is yet another point of
their exhibition - that the government propaganda machine works to reduce our consciousness through media means.
This is Peter Reiquam's "Disorient Expess." It might not be obvious, but there's an engine
and caboose attached to the end of the centrifuge arm. The work, which is interactive by
only working if the participant inserts a quarter into a wall-mounted coin-activator mechanism,
is simple while being bizarrely engaging. Once the quarter is inserted, the belt-connected
motor-driven centrifuge arm swings around moving the train on the trestle track at such
a speed that it becomes invisible. The entire experience lasts about 20 seconds, from
insertion of quarter to full spin-up to relatively quick stop. Reiquam was on the King County
Public Art Commission for six years and is heavily involved in Seattle's Public Art Program.
His "day" job is that of a public space artist who's worked with a variety of transit systems.
Disorient Express is both a "public art" in that trestles are part of the public infrastructure and
a mechanical sculpture. More on Reiquam's approach and art philosophy at dorkbot-sea.
This is Olivia Robinson's "Imbalanced Ambivilance" interactive work. The work, which only begins if someone turns
the crank, shows a nurse and a patient "interacting" through clever splicing of two separate videos of a nurse getting
into her uniform and a patient waiting. When the crank stops, the video fades; when the crank is turned, the video starts
to move again. Robinson used her own accordian music to accompany the LCD video. She is a graduate of two fine
Eastern institutions (Maryland Institute College of Art and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and has BFA and MFA degrees.
As an artist, she believes that art bridges the distance between strangers and enables personal and trusting contact and
relationships. The crank in her Imbalanced Ambivilance artwork is the non-threatening invitation to strangers to
participate and engage. This is art as therapy. She explains how she came to this approach at the dorkbot-sea site.
A view of the top half of Ginny Ruffner's wonderful interactive video installation "How Y
became RGB." The chandelier contains hand-blown glass ornaments, video monitors, and
two video cameras. Below the chandelier is a table with mirrors which show the monitors
and chandelier above. The video cameras are aimed at the mirror and when one inserts
a hand or head over the mirrored-table, the images respond accordingly. It's confusing and
engaging simultaneously because it's not apparent how the two are connected. Part of the
mystery and intrigue in this work is Ruffner's use of black-and-white video - hence the title,
"How Y became RGB." In television, the color information (RGB) is encoded separately from
the luminance information (Y). In Ruffner's art work here the color component - the live
interacting participant - becomes black and white. Because her work uses mirrors, the inversion
is both clever and subtle. The black-and-white images are incorporated into the monitors
in the quite colorful (RGB) chandelier and reflected back again at the participant's mirror end.
This is Andrew Sempere's "GrassHappy: Growing Pet for Improved Happiness!" This is one
complex work of art, fitting because of Sempere's personal philosophy about the use of
technology - he thinks we shouldn't forget how to appreciate the simple pleasures simply because
technology can make our lives easier or more efficient. The grass is intended to be stroked.
The light under the glass starts purple and the more one strokes the grass the greener the
light becomes - indicating that the grass is "happy." The LCD screen shows how long the
grass has been stroked (it resets after a non-stroke period of about half a minute). What
Sempere is saying here is that we need to take time out to enjoy the simple things and that in
so doing we regain a sense of appreciation - happiness. He's an artist and instructor at MIT
with degrees in art from the Art Institute of Chicago and science from MIT.
Looking at the video monitor lineup which is SID's "Disassembly Line" artwork. SID (Sound
Industrial Design) is Cathy McClure and Seth Sexton. This work shows a form of
deconstruction. The exhibit is trying to show how we've become a society of mass-produced
"stuff" consumers and quickly discard the old for the new. They've taken the plush, soft,
covering off of a battery-powered robot dog and video-taped the dog walking across a plane.
Each of the monitors shows the dog-robot in successive moves across the plane. The line
of monitors represents the assembly line in mass-production factories and the deconstructed
robot-dog pet represents the underlying and quickly replaceable product of the production line.
Art as social critic showing us how consumption-driven our society has become.
Two different close-up views of Matt Stiger's untitled interactive neon work. The work is a tall tube containing
neon and an indeterminate material inside. By touching the roughly five-foot high tube the participant changes
both the shape of and the color of the wandering plasma. Sitting by itself it undulates apparently on its own,
soliciting the participant to put their hand on the tube - at which point the colors and shape change. Stiger says
he's inspired by beautiful natural items such as coral and his art tries to solicit that inspiration in others, read
more on his art philosophy at the dorkbot-sea site.
A transient image of Edward Tang's presentation "Threads://Porn-Personals.html" which
uses custom software to present an artistic statement about our sex-driven lives and society.
The computer-driven system has a stored set of video clips from an adult video. The software
connects to a live adult personals site and parses the messages, extracting specific key words
which are then presented on the monitor along with sections of the video clip in a 3D format
where the words and images move back and forth as if across different planes of space.
Because the system uses live data it is always changing and presenting a new abstract 3D
view of the intersection of desire and availability. The video is analyzed with respect to each
new message on a color pixel-by-pixel basis and then presented as an abstract 3D shape
behind the abstracted key words. More on the software is at the dorkbot-sea site. Tang
writes his own software and for this work he collaborated with Jeanne Strohl.
A view of W. Scott Trimble's elaborate, complicated and engaging work "Moving Pictures."
The participant pushes a "start" button and the system begins to move four separate panes of
glass across an arc. The viewer looks through the frame and sees a constantly changing "picture"
created by the interception of the four planes, each of which has been marked with different designs
and visual elements. His art philosophy includes inviting the participant into the process of creation,
deconstruction and appreciation. See more images below.
A sample from "Moving Pictures" of what appears through the frame. Because each of the
four glass panes has a different set of drawings and art, the scene changes continuously,
allowing the viewer to participate in the act of art creation.
Looking from the perspective of W. Scott Trimble's "Moving Pictures," this is how the viewer
appears on the other side of the frame. Trimble says he's motivated by the contrast between
nature and machine, between industry and individual figure and was strongly influenced by
his youth near Yosemite National Park and the appearance nearby of decaying machines.
His principal expression as an artist is in the metal fabricating and machine invention area.
Three views of Ryan Wolfe's "Sketch of a field of grass, Pacific Coast 2004." This is a fascinating work of art
and explores Wolfe's philosophy that a memorable time, place, or experience can be condensed into a
singular physical object which captures the essence of the memorable qualities of the experience. More on
his philosophy is at the dorkbot-sea site. In this piece, the memorable experience is being at a Pacific Ocean
beach with the slow wafting back and forth of sea reed grasses on the shoreline. To capture this essential quality
Wolfe has recorded the sound of the wind at that beach and used the undulating wave-like quality of that
sound capture to embed a flash ROM chip with the waveform. That waveform drives a circuit connected to
a selsyn motor, which in turn has a blade of sea grass attached to its armature. The result is that the individual
circuit-motor-grass blade sets (there are seven of them) undulate and wave back and forth exactly like real
blades of sea grass at a beach. Because the motion is controlled by actual wind noise the undulating motion is
as realistic and random as if there really were wind moving the grass blades. The system is entirely silent,
adding to the capture of the actual event - no motor noise - and the simulated wind is slow enough that one
wouldn't expect to hear any whistling from the wind.
Ellen Ziegler's untitled work using hand-made paper, electric arc drawing and ultraviolet light photographic
impressions is shown obliquely at the beginning of this series (the fourth image down). A better image and
description is also available at the dorkbot-sea site.
The Center on Contemporary Art and dorkbot-sea are to be complimented for this outstanding exhibition, as
are all the participating artists. Remember also that there is a concurrent release of electronic music and
experimental sounds which goes with the exhibit - People Doing Strange Things with Electricity Too. The
music is available for free download as individual songs or as the entire two-CD album from Seattle-based
net label Comfort Stand Records. Kate Seekings and Otis Fodder produced the album and Kate Seekings
curated the exhibition and are certainly owed a huge hand and congratulations for bringing such a fantastic
set of art and musical experiences to the public. The exhibition remains at CoCA's 410 Dexter Avenue N
gallery through March 3, 2005. This is easily worth several hours of your time and I can't encourage you
enough to go see these works and listen to (or download or both) the music.
[ Nota Bene -
The Center on
Contemporary Art has a generous policy regarding photography of work
appearingin the gallery. That notwithstanding, these photographs showing individual works are, in fact, showing copyrighted
and/or patented works by the authors and their collaborators (as appropriate). These works are being shown in the public
domain but they are not, themselves, IN the public domain. I say this for anyone wishing to use these photographs and
request that they respect the artistic rights of the artists and their collaborators by including the artist's name, the title of the
work of art and the fact that it is copyrighted by the artist. The contents of this site (chasBlog) are covered by a
Creative Commons license which requests but does not require attribution.]
Posted: Thu - January 27, 2005 at 10:53 AM
Quick Links
Categories
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM