Posts Tagged ‘interactive art’
I’ve lost my dear friend and collaborator
taken by John Adams at my wedding in 2007
Today I am reeling from a terrible loss. My friend and collaborator, Dan Garcia was one of those lost on the Conception diving boat this labor day weekend. He and his partner Yulia were among my nearest and dearest friends for the past twenty years.
Since this is my art blog I will tell you especially about Dan, my most frequent and closest collaborator. Dan documented and helped with so much of my work over the years. He was incredible to brainstorm anything with, but his specialties were photography and tech. In particular he collaborated with me on Cultural Fabric Breathes Still and Access by working with me to design the tech aspects, and building the code and hardware to make the artworks happen. There are other people I have collaborated on tech with, but he and I made fireworks when we worked.
He was himself a talented photographer and light sculpture artist- making the movement and shifting of LED lighting look more organic and natural than anything I’ve seen. He created an open source LED lighting platform (FAST LED) that anyone can use- from Disney and Cirque du Soleil , Artists, Burning Man projects, to everyday hobbyists.
He was so passionate about art, especially interactive art. So passionate about supporting art and making it happen. He worked on various Burning Man projects including Syzygryd, which was an interactive sound, light and fire piece he did with Ardent Artists (formerly Interpretive Arson and Ardent Heavy Industries). He was just that person always looking to see how he could help, and his enthusiasm and smile were infectious. For his professional career, he was a masterful programmer and code ninja, and he worked with my husband, following him to two different companies so they could work together. The two of them were also a fantastic team.
For the last two years he was recovering from the loss of another dear friend, and had only just been starting to do art again beginning with Access a few months ago. Last weekend I was over for dinner and he showed me the first art piece he had made on his own since her death. He told me working with me helped him break through to making art again. It’s hard to imagine never working together again.
It’s hard to believe he’s gone. He and Yulia were the sort of people who touch and light up so many lives, who welcomed and supported such a large community. We are all absolutely shattered by this.
Another reminder to appreciate the people you love, not put off brilliant ideas for building things together for some future date, and to make time for those extra moments with them.
Syzygryd (taken by me in 2010)
Installing at MOT (Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo)
The unsung heroes of the art world include museum installation staff. They are often accomplished artists in their own right, and with large projects like these, they are indispensable. MOT‘s team was fantastic. We had a few hiccups (one of which was that humidity in Japan caused my print to wrinkle), but they are saving the day and making my work look its best.
I cannot tell you how great it is to have such careful, dedicated, clever folks to entrust my work to.
Throughout everything the exhibition curator Kasumi and another curator, Uta (who is assisting me with translation and helping me personally) have been amazing in helping me create my vision in their space. The museum space itself is amazing. I only wish I’d had more lead time to do even more (especially with all that vertical space!!!) I can’t wait to see everything after participation!
On a more personal note, one of the many new medications for CFS/ME that I am using is helping tremendously with my energy levels and recovery rates. This meant I was able to do this install so much more easily and made this trip so much better.
Knee Deep in Rainbows
I’ve been busy.
- Finished correct size (not yet glued down)
- Internals for the Access card reader box
Access is nearly ready for action, thanks to the programing and hardware design of my friend and collaborator Daniel Garcia and the help of my three lovely studio assistants who have been sanding away at the 60+ boxes I printed on the 3D printer.
Access will have its first run of interaction at Intel’s conference in Portland, Oregon this May, where I will also be presenting a talk on intersections and empathy.
The piece involves a series of statements about Access with “Yes” and “No” buttons with card readers to log responses. The statements cover all kinds of access based on education, physicality, finances, background, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, culture, social elements, etc. Like Identity Tapestry, specific statements are selected and phrased to focus on the _intersections_ so that one statement may cover different kinds of people’s specific access challenges.
Each visitor will have an access card (image below) to use in including their own access story into the piece. I made these softer and more tactile with an eye to giving them the approachability, uniqueness and comfort people find in my yarn to set against the more impersonal electronic devices. The color of the card will determine the color shown in the data visualizations for the piece. They go from statement to statement, scan their card, and then select “Yes” or “No” for each of the sixty statements.
In this first iteration, the data visualizations will be on large monitors on either side of the piece, but future iterations will likely use project mapping or combinations of screens and projection mapping. I have the advantage of knowing the specific group for this particular piece in advance and knowing everyone should have no trouble accessing the piece. In future more public interactions though, the goal is to make the piece accessible to participants who do not speak English, or who are blind or wheelchair bound. The fonts were already selected based on being better for those with dyslexia.
In the meantime I am working on a very special (and HUGE) version of Identity Tapestry which will include maps for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT). The show (Wandering, Mapping) will open on August 4th and run until October 20th, 2019. The piece will also feature a companion wall of responses on local, Tokyo paper I have hand-dyed alongside the yarn.
My studio helpers have been my hands through much of the dyeing process, and all of the measuring and winding and they’ve been wonderful. I am looking forward to seeing everything up and installed!
Identity Tapestry at the Marjorie Barrick Museum
I am pleased to announce that The Marjorie Barrick Museum in Las Vegas has commissioned Identity Tapestry #12 as part of a community initiative in Healing Through Art in the wake of the shooting there. It will be on display in the West Gallery from February 2 – May 12, 2018. From there it becomes part of the permanent collection.
I will also be speaking in an artist panel on “Art with Social Purpose” hosted by Nevada Humanities on May 4th, 7PM at The Writers Block in downtown Las Vegas.
I have been happy to prove to myself, with this third installation in a museum since I became so ill with CFS/ME that I am now in a specialized wheelchair outside the house, that I can still work productively as an artist. This has been thanks to the support of friends, family and assistants.
Almost ten years ago now my process and my work went through a serious change with pregnancy and the birth of my daughter. There were “limitations” that made me use different materials and ways of working, and they prompted the shift to Particaptory Installation. That work has lifted my art and my career as an artist.
This is another shift, and it is already teaching me a lot that I can put into my work and practice. I fully expect it will continue to lift my work.
New Experiences, New Material
This photo represents one of the first bright spots in my new life as a disabled person (with ME/CFS). Last weekend was the first time in nearly five months I’ve been really able to move around outside the house, thanks to finally getting a power chair that supports my neck and torso. We went to Disneyland for my daughter’s birthday wish, and we did it to the nines.
I’ve been working on the next two installations (for the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles), with the assistance of friends. I know I will need to hire assistants for new projects, but I’m still feeling freshly vulnerable in this state and I need to adjust. Also, while I love inviting strangers into certain phases of my process, I’m very picky about who I let into other parts of my process. Thankfully I have amazing people around me.
With my current condition, half the people get better within two years, and most of the rest never do. I made the mistake of waiting a year for my back to get better nine years ago, and until my muscles stopped working (and compressing my spinal nerve), it never did. I am thankful to be out of that level of constant pain, though I know I would trade back the pain for mobility in a heartbeat.
So… I am not wasting time now. My art is moving on, and I have a fire under me to make new work about this experience. I am very aware that disabled or not, I am very fortunate. I have good insurance, my husband’s job supports us, freeing me to do my art without the constraints of whether it will sell or needing another job to support it. We have enough money that my condition is not bankrupting us and I was able to buy the expensive chair that allows me to. I have supportive friends, an education, the tools to self-advocate, and so much more. But this has thrown into relief how if this is so hard for me, how much harder it must be for most people.
After my recent experience of traveling with a wheelchair, the systemic lack of consideration and ability to do simple things like take a cab with any reliability, get on a plane you were assured you could take your chair on, or arrive with that all-important chair in one piece have given me fire to push for awareness.
I knew I had been thinking about a piece on Access for a while, but I didn’t realize it had been this long! June 2013! Usually with something that scale and cost it really helps me to know it will have a space to show first, but I don’t care anymore. I will build it, and I will find it places to show. As soon as the next two installations are wrapped, this is my next project. I have been thinking about it on and off this whole time, and developing it, but now I have new first hand experience of being confined to home and wheelchair to add.
All that said, this new piece isn’t only about disabled access, it’s about all kinds of invisible access- financial, educational, social, racial, cultural, linguistic, etc. It is about making people aware of what they can do without even having to think about it, and where others are barring and struggling to get in.
Natural Dyeing for Sukkah Project
I’ve been invited to inhabit the Sukkah at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco) on October 8th for one day of the holiday of Sukkot. They invited six artists to each take a day to create an open studio or installation project inside the frame of the Sukkah. I decided to take the opportunity to do a new Participatory Installation piece within that frame entitled Refuge of Leaves.
Process
These are photos of the dyeing process for this new project. These are the first three batches, using pomegranate dye, rhubarb dye and artichoke dye. Each dye changes depending on if I scour the paper first, or if I add a mordant, or if I add iron. I did every combination on four kinds of paper to get a wider variety.
As I’m going, I allow the paper to show some marks- wrinkles, the mark of the iron, irregularities, etc. Showing their history, that they have been through something, a difficult process that may even damage them seemed like a perfect parallel to individuals seeking refuge, to people who had a story to tell.
About the Piece
Traditionally a Sukkah is a symbolic ritual space of refuge in the wilderness created for the holiday of Sukkot in the Jewish faith and tradition. “Refuge of Leaves” creates a Sukkah as a space for reflection where people from many backgrounds can reflect on and share their personal experiences of refuge from “wildernesses”, whether physical or metaphorical. As a Sukkah it symbolizes a liminal space of safety within the wilderness between worlds.
I followed traditional aspects of the Sukkah in using natural plant-based materials in the form of a variety of papers from different places and times, including papyrus as well as paper that could be put through a modern printer. These are for participants to write responses to their choice of prompts on the subject of refuge. I am hand-dyeing the papers with natural dyes to mimic the color range of plants one might build a traditional sukkah from. The dyeing processes also makes each piece of paper individual in color and texture, just like the people writing their responses.
The word “leaves” in the title functions in a number of ways. The individual leaves of paper in a larger book, the plant leaves that form a traditional Sukkah, and the nature of a this kind of refuge as a temporary shelter (not a home) that eventually requires one to leave. The structure is very literally a refuge made of leaves that each participant leaves behind.
As part of this project I will be there from 10AM until 4PM to discuss my work and facilitate the process. Please join me.
in-process on “Between the Lines (Experience Exchange)”
These are the first set of “pages” for participants in Between the Lines (Experience Exchange) to write on. The materials are translucent acrylics on vellum with bookbinding thread sewn into the tops to tie them into the structure.
The piece was commissioned by the College of the Redwoods for their annual Book of the Year celebration. This year’s book is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The structure of the piece is a large sculpture created a s a physical framing of some of the book’s core concepts (I saw them, but also based on interviews with the author, reviews, and discussions with other people). The questions also derive from the book, and will ask participants to respond with their own related experiences.
Bubbles, narratives, identity, and empathy.
My work is often involved with narrative. I am interested in how we describe ourselves and each other, and especially in challenging those definitions. I like to lead people into a space and thought process where they encounter things in themselves and other people they don’t expect, or where something puts them in a position to realize that something they had defined, perhaps without even thinking, is not actually so simple. It never is.
I love liminal space. It is that space between things- ideas, places, definitions, roles… We usually think of it as transformative space, the way a journey is often transformative, or a ritual space like college (where you go apart from your normal life with the express intention of growing and changing). It is uncertain space. Undefined space. It can be scary, and many people don’t want to go there. They want things understood, defined and nailed down. …but it is where we must to go to grow, because growth by definition is not nailed down, and never the same. There are some people though, who like to live there, and we often make art, and we often make people uncomfortable because we cannot be nailed down.
In the past few days I have encountered a barrage of voices talking about a set of related ideas dear to my heart which I have held for as long as I can remember, most especially the danger of staying within our own boundaries- staying within our own circle of understanding, and the importance of stepping outside of it to achieve empathy and new perspectives. The first was a moment of Barack Obama’s farewell speech about how fortified we are in our bubbles and how we cannot be if we want society to function together as a whole. It made me think about a favorite TED talk by author Elif Safak, but searching for that, I found another TED talk I had not yet heard by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It held overlapping messages. One in common was the way writers who are not straight white males (and I will add artists, filmmakers, musicians, playwrights, dancers…) are pigeonholed into telling a story about an identity the world already thinks it has nailed down- a flat identity. “Tell us the story of the Subjugated Middle Eastern Woman” (because as a Middle Eastern Woman, that will be “authentic” for you). “Tell us the story of the poor starving African” (ditto). If you try to tell a story that doesn’t mirror the narrow box you are believed to occupy, then it must be “inauthentic”, precisely because we only hear single, flat narratives about what is perceived as a “group”. Today on the radio I heard an interview with an artist I have long admired the work of, but never heard interviewed (Yinka Shonibare). In a flight of serendipity, he was talking about the exact same thing. I suggest listening to all of them. Each is eloquent in their own way and addresses different perspectives on the issues.
In recent years I feel like one of the casualties of the very important struggle to honor the different experiences of different people (especially marginalized people whose many stories are not told or are not heard enough if they are) is that we have divided ourselves into smaller and smaller groups and categories which do not communicate. There is an idea that people outside each group can never understand… and a chilling subtext that we shouldn’t even try because it isn’t possible. In such a climate saying one might even begin to understand is seen as dishonoring and invalidating the experience of the other person instead of an act of empathy. In addition from being discouraged from these kinds of engagements of empathy is the idea that we cannot comment, we cannot respond… which means we cannot communicate about these ideas. I know this is a correction swing from the voices in power’s “comments” and “responses” actually being about silencing, distorting, talking down, and even taking from these stories without the credit where it is due. We cannot let that false dialogue stand, but if we go so far that we cannot genuinely communicate across boundaries in both directions and allow each other to imagine what it is to be on the other side, then we are on the path to widen those divisions and build higher fortifications.
In an absolute way, no one will perfectly understand another person’s experiences in exactly the same way as that they do. No one has the exact same life experiences and identity. When you cut the experiences and definitions fine enough, you end up with a “group” of one. No one has your experience. But we do have common human experiences. We do have feelings in common, and more importantly, we have imagination. That is the currency of the arts. When an author writes from the perspective of someone of a different age, gender, nationality than herself, or even creates characters unlike herself, she is engaging in an act of empathy and imagination. When she does this she is creating a bridge for others to follow that empathy, to imagine themselves as that person, to step into their skin, to find common ground. This is as close as we get, and it brings us closer together. If we look at the plethora of social psychology studies on the subject, it also makes us more likely to help and not harm people the more we understand them and realize what we share in common. This is essential work. It does not steal experience, it multiples it.
Right now I am creating a Participatory Installation in response to the book of another author Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me) at a college to try to help students connect to the book and to each other. Like other work of mine it will invite the students to share their own experiences within the frame of the piece. In this case the frame of the piece is taken from my interpretation of the book’s major themes and stories. I almost turned this commission down a number of times. I have lost sleep over it. You see, I am a white woman, and in this cultural climate I am not supposed to engage these topics because they are outside of my bubble. More fairly, artists of color are underrepresented and should be sought out first. Knowing this, I asked if they hadn’t considered asking an artist of color first (they looked, but didn’t find the kind of work that I do, which is what they were excited about), or having the author come speak (they did, he’s too expensive for their budget, though I am glad to say they are having someone from the local NAACP speak). They came to the conclusion that what they needed wasn’t an artist who matched the demographic of the author, but an artist who specialized in getting people to connect and understand each other, who worked with narrative and identity, whoever that artist was. They came to me because of seeing Identity Tapestry, which does all of these things. I took the commission in the end because I don’t know someone who fits the demographic box of the author and does the work kind of work they want, and more importantly, I don’t believe in boxes. I believe in bridges. My art is all about making them, and I like to think that makes me someone who can answer this call. The project is about responding to this book and getting the students to connect with it.
Response must be open to everyone. The attempt to understand, to empathize, to connect and to imagine must be open to everyone. It must be or we cannot break these barriers. We can’t have a separate set of rules and dialogue for art and expression for “white people” and other set for “people of color”. One set for “men”, and another for “women”, for “queer” and “straight” and on and on, cut more and more finely… Who is to say what each “group” is and who fits there? We need dialogue that passes through the boundaries and boxes and bubbles and definitions to our shared human experiences, our empathy, and our imagination. That is where we grow and learn. That is the crazy liminal in-between space. That is where hope for connection and understanding is.
Thoughts on Performance Art- my Ritual Space approach
So I have a lot of thoughts on performance art. Many of them come down to the idea that when you push it to the extremes (which is one of art’s natural habitats) it becomes about enacting extremes on the body. Extreme pain (so many), extreme pleasure (Seed Bed comes to mind), sex, nudity, privation, stillness, repetitive motion… so many extremes of what the body is and what it can take. An extension of that is the extremes of emotional exposure as seen in and through the body. There are many interesting, important approaches to this, but I feel like it is ground well covered, and not what I’m interested in for my own work.
My work isn’t about me or my body or extremes, it’s about creating a platform, structure, even a ritual space for others to engage with ideas I present: with each other, with themselves, and now, possibly with me.
Ritual space is something I have been interested in for as long as I can remember. It was central to my studies in my first undergrad in History of Religions. I took a wonderful anthropology-based (Turner-centric) course on Ritual, but I saw ritual in everything from folk tales to architecture and football games. Ritual space is throughout our secular and personal lives- the ritual space of a hot bath with candles, a classroom, a bar, a gallery or a public library. These spaces have forms, rules, and roles which set them apart from other spheres and spaces in our lives and they create feelings and thoughts unique to those spaces. In these spaces we are ourselves, and yet ourselves in a specific role or character to fit the space, observing certain rituals of that space (a 3rd grade teacher will be themselves at both a bar and their classroom, but different selves).
In #DadaTarot I am creating a ritual space for the action to happen in. That action requires a mediator with a certain level of otherness and authority. A slight change of clothing and demeanor is enough to create this. I am still very much being myself, but I have given myself certain rules (some of which I specifically gave myself permission to break). The rules, the clothing, demeanor and the simple object of a table give me the structure of a ritual space for the piece to work in. Given the nature of Dada I didn’t even allow myself anything fancy for the table- it is a ready-made cocktail table and the covering was the first plain black piece of fabric on the top of my fabric pile, not sewn or tidied in any way.
For this piece, the Role of Barker/carnival worker has to be there to set the interaction apart from other gallery interaction, but also to get the participants to enter in a questioning way. These roles are known for being untrustworthy. I want people to come to this project with skepticism. For this piece I would absolutely not dress in any kind of clothing associated with actual fortune-tellers with very good reason: my role does not actually involve doing the fortune-telling. That I leave to the participants. The barker’s role is to bring bystanders into the action and tell them what the rules of the game are, which is what I do.
Me in the role as artist would to explain the piece and how it fits into my work. In the case of me performing in this piece (as opposed to someone else performing the piece while I stand next to it as Artist) I mostly steer clear of this. If they press, I mostly answer as Barker, not artist as to the nature of the piece. That said, I am remaining myself. This performance allows for expressing what I want to say, holding back, and then allowing myself to be pressed for an opinion, even as I say I should not really be giving it… which is what good Barkers do too.
I suspect more of my work is heading in this direction. Most of the participatory works need some kind of “baby sitter” during interactions to explain the interactive process to people and to keep people (especially drunk people) from breaking them or walking away with parts of the art. Mostly the ritual space of Gallery with the role of Gallery assistants covers this. Now that I am looking this aspect of my work in the face and acknowledging that what I am creating with my installations is ritual space (inside the ritual space of gallery/museum/etc.), it logically follows to incorporate ritual roles for certain works.
*note: I am fully aware that not all performance art involves extremes, and there is a lot of performance art out there (physically extreme and not) which I admire. A lot of it is politically extreme and I applaud that too. This studio blog post is about my own artistic path.
#DadaTarot: the first readings
I created this project for a show celebrating the 100th anniversary of Dada. I made the #DadaTaroT deck out of two sets of images: 21 red wood and laser-etched cardboard symbol cards, and over 200 media image cards on laser-etched cardboard.
The method was simple: a pair of people (strangers, lovers, friends…) would be invited by the performers dressed in carnival-esque gear to each ask a question which they could not at that moment know the answer to. One person would ask (aloud or in silence) and then select one red card and two brown cards. The partner would then use the cards to attempt to answer the person’s question. Then they switch. I documented each one in rough and ready fashion with a photo and hastily hand-written notes. These are the results.
The Dadaists were coming out of the horror of WWI that left many of their generation feeling that life was meaningless and absurd: Religion, Government, Philosophy and Art seemed to have utterly failed to provide meaning in the context of that horror. The Dadaists embraced and exposed the absurdity.
I used Tarot because it seemed to be a perfect intersection of the randomness that a lot of dada art has employed through the use of games of chance together with a random assault of media and symbolism wherein we search for meaning. In the end it is about what each person brings to it and what they _want_ to find, but as in all interactions it’s not just our interpretations, but the interpretations of those around to us, or even close to us that have an effect. Our negotiation of those interpretations of our world together are what interests me as an artist. This exchange provided a platform for mini exchanges and negotiations of how we interpret our shared world.
So many interesting things happened during this project, only a few of which are visible in these records- the best of it was within the interaction. It is very much is about what people bring to it.
From the Studio 