Blog #10: Joker's Wild!

For this "anything goes" blog assignment, I wanted to take a look again at works found on the Creators Project website and take a look at one that I find interesting.  Specifically, I am going to look at installation pieces by Japanese artist Mariko Mori, found on the Creators Project, which deal with the concept of infinity, as well as invisible energies.

Mariko Mori is an artist who has been working on projects with photography and installations, combining fantasy and technology since the mid 90s.  With this, she has focused more and more on the influences of technology, and in many of her works, has collaborated with engineers and artists to create permanent installations across the world to express her ideas on human connectivity and communication.

Made of fiberglass and utilizing a system of sensors to detect the energy of people around it, this installation, titled "Infinite Energy I, II, III" made this year (2013), premeired in Tokyo, take a great deal of inspiration from the construction of a mobius strip to create an infinite shape.

Mori's main concept behind this work though, is that the universe is made up of 96% invisible energy, thus, with the help of engineers and programmers, made the pieces capable of recording the energy of visitors by tracking the movement in the room, and uses this information to alter the colors of the sculptures through LEDs within them, creating a visual experience which is drawn from the energy of those observing the art, and creating a visualization for the invisible energy that our universe is made up of.

In more philosophical levels, the piece along with her otherworks (not listed), Mori hopes, will help lead to the realization that we as humans are part of nature, and that this energy which we cannot see can be used to connect us all together in a similar fashion as to how computers and technology can be connected through the employement of the internet.  By seeing light which is derived from the actions of the viewers, viewers may be able to make the connection that their actions hold consequence; that they influence that which is around them, even in invisible ways through simply moving around a room and expressing energy through that.

Personally, I find the seemingly simple yet elegant design of "Infinite Energy I, II, III" to add to the meaning intended for it, as the sheer simplicity of it allows people to truly focus on the important portions of the work, the infinite design and the lights that are made to interact with those around it with the so-called "invisible energy".  The general concept as well, is intriguing as throughout the course (ISTA 301), we have looked at the different manners in which interactivity enhances or can enhance the value or meaning of art by having aspects rely on the viewers of the work; the people who would call it art.  With this interactivity, the message is far more clear than possible to communicate by a static installation, because it embodies that which it is meant to represent, the infinite energy that connects us (as Mori would like us to see).

For more information on the piece, see the link below.

~~~~~Nathaniel Hendrix~~~~~


Sources:
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/show/mariko-mori-uses-sculpture-to-explore-infinity-video

Blog #9: More Installation Art!

This week, I am taking a look at a couple more examples of installation art and other multimedia artworks, all of which are not "Screen" (the piece I talked about last blog).

First, we have "Shadow Fugue", an installation piece from the VIDA: Art and Artificial Life International Awards, produced by Sion Jeong.  The piece is a series of plexi-glass rods attached by wire to small motors on the wall of the exhibit.  With these motors, once a person softly touches the system, the surface begins a "breathing movement", producing along with its movement an elegant light and sound accompanyment.  With its quasi-breathing movement, the rods create shadows on themselves, that appear and recede, furthering the illusion of a wall breathing in front of you, making subtle tinklng sounds and chanting voices through the motors on the wall.  As for a purpose, Sion Jeong saw this simple mechanism as one started by interaction, but then becoming an autonomous sculpture that self-regulates its movement beyond the initial touch, reaching multiple senses of the audience to intrigue them.

Next we have an installation piece that utilizes Twitter feeds to produce vibrant LED displays, "Datagrove". The piece uses luminescent "responsive" fibers, text-to-speech modules to read out Twitter posts, and sensors for detecting human presence, producing a soft undulating sound to react, as well as systems to collect the Twitter data being used.  The "social media whispering wall" was conceived by  Future Cities Lab in San Francisco, as an installation to integrate social interaction and sensing human presence in the structure.  It's purpose is to stimulate public discourse, by providing trending Twitter feeds and displaying and reading them out for those around to hear, while also reacting to the breeze through the responsive fibers, giving it the illusion of being an intelligent organism.

The last piece I will look at is also from the VIDA Awards, named "Hylozoic Soil", by Philip Beesley, an experimental architect.  This installation, using the philosophic doctrine called Hylozoism (idea that matter is inseperable from life as a property of matter), uses a lattice of transparent acrylic tiles, and a sensor network to control the lattice to react to nearby movement and move towards the audience members who venture into the piece.  The entire system thus emulates a similar behavior as seen in coral reefs, with opening clamping, and an organic sense about its activity in response to its surroundings, making it not only an interesting installation work, but an example of artificial life, being an inorganic structure giving the illusion of true natural behavior, as intended by the artist.

All together, these pieces are 3 examples of the vast varieties of installation artworks present today as the medium continues to take in other mediums and grow in popularity in exhibits and as temporary or permanent structures wherever they are commissioned.  Thanks for Reading!

~~~~Nathaniel Hendrix~~~~

Blog #8: Installation Art

For this weeks blog, I am going to take a look at Installation Art, which grew in popularity during the late 50s and early 60s.  Installation art is a style of three dimensional work that is generally site specific, as the sculpture or other objects are installed in a specific location and cannot be moved generally.

From the era in which this genre of art first started, one example of early installation art was Allan Kaprow's Words.

Allan Kaprow was one of the most influential artists involved in both Happenings and installations, and in this installation in New York, 1962 at the Smolin Gallery, Kaprow combined a vast amount of paper with random arrangements of words backed by music played by multiple record-players, creating a massive chaotic mess of surroundings for people to walk into and experience.

With this style, the purpose is to take the experience that spectators can have with art in its traditional mediums such as on a canvas, and then expand it to becoming complete environments or structures to envelope  people, or at minimum allow people to walk in and have the art around them rather than simply hung on the wall.  Kaprow subscribed to this line of thought whole-heartedly, moving art away from canvases and wall hangings, to expanding what mediums could be used to create art, removing it from a traditional pedestal.

The main limitation, or possibly even a strength, is that once planted down and installed, it shall never be imagined in the same manner again, creating many temporary works and structures that only exist in one place, and cannot move from that point.  Nevertheless, the medium that is made of many possible mediums is growing stronger due to the new fronts provided by technology and virtual reality in installations.  With these newer technologies, pieces can be moved more easily and replicate similar experiences, or even adapt to fit a different audience using dynamic visuals or interactivity with an audience, making the art more conceptual, with the final piece being less important when compared to the theory or idea behind the piece.

In more modern interpretations of installation art, digital media and technologies have been used to produce similar effects, but with the interactivity and dynamic reactions made possible through the technology.  One example that holds a similar goal to Kaprow's early installation is Screen by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, a professor at the Universtiy of California Santa Cruz, who conducts research into storytelling through games.  In Screen (2003), people walk into a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, a massive room of virtual reality displays.  They begin the experience by reading and listening to the "Memory texts", random storylines, then the words become loose, and the observer finds they can interact and push these wods floating about then and across the walls.  This interaction with the words distorts their meaning and order, and can end with either the words being misplaced or simply collapsing to the floor if too many are removed at once.  Holding relevance to Wardrip-Fruin's interests, the whole experiences purpose was to introduce storytelling in a game-like fashion, and look at the reading, listening, and manipulation of the surrounding text to become a story that utilized multiple senses.

Overall, the genre that is installation art is an extraordinary one, capable of many new things since its conception in the 1950s and 60s, with new mediums finding a way to progress the possibilities of this style of art.

~~~~~Nathaniel Hendrix~~~~~~