Visitors call the shots in art museum’s ‘Act/React’
Exhibit explores perception of digital world
The people are the power behind the “Act/React” exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a new assembly of living constructs taking their cues from their admirers.
This isn't an adolescent arcade filled with blips and bleeps and spinning lights. And it isn't "Dance, Dance Revolution" or an artsy display of the Nintendo Wii.
Instead, this collection explores the human-visual perception and the way images are created, the contrast between the physical world and the digital one and the nature of interactivity.
Arguably most important, it also examines the idea of shared ownership of art between the artist and those appreciating the art.
Guest curator George Fifield has fabricated an experience that is as organic as it is high-tech, with pieces that pull viewers in through motion, absorption and reflection.
"All of these pieces are sort of collaborations where the artists share in the creative experience with the audience," Fifield said.
Dance of shadow, light
One of the first - and best - examples of this is Scott Snibbe's "Deep Walls," a group of shadows projected in a grid on a wall. Step up to the wall, strike a pose and your silhouette is recorded and slotted in one of the squares.
This communal dance of shadow and light will be exactly what the crowds at the art museum decide. The more capricious and fun, the better, and the uniqueness of each individual means this engaging piece has infinite possibilities.
It's unfortunate that each shadow isn't archived for posterity and posted online as an ongoing repository for the piece, but as Fifield notes, "Deep Walls" is "totally ephemeral."
That motif of always-evolving is also present in "Healing Pool," a digital reflecting pond designed by Brian Knep that feels as if you are walking around in a petri dish of liquid light.
Using a colossal floor pad, projectors and cameras mounted on the ceiling, Knep beams down a flowing maze of bubbles and fluids that rips apart as visitors walk through it and then reforms in their wake.
The sophisticated software powering this installation uses algorithms similar to the systems behind biological patterns such as zebra stripes, Fifield says, meaning the designs in "Healing Pool" are always similar but never identical. "Healing Pool" is like splashing around in a warm, gentle, neon ooze of water and ink, with digital globules floating, flowing and recombining.
The only display rivaling the contemplative, hypnotic effect of "Healing Pool" is a captivating projected reflection called "Snow Mirror" by Daniel Rozin, who uses a camera to capture video of viewers as they stand in front of a projection of falling snow that surrounds them in the storm.
These digital particles land on your phantom-like outline, fill in your form and then break apart and resume their descent when you move. This display is cloistered in its own dark room, lending a soft serenity that anyone who has shoveled snow late at night and then paused to take in the quiet can appreciate.
The blizzard in "Snow Mirror" is a bit reminiscent of the days of rabbit ears on a television and the scattered distortion when the picture is completely lost - although it is much more calm and soft.
The shimmering images in "Snow Mirror" are haunting and beautiful, and I wish there were a way to record a screen capture and savor what is, sadly, a fleeting experience in the electronic ether.
Fifield says Rozin's work is about using reflection and "repurposing the pixel" - the smallest piece of information in an image - a concept also evident in "Peg Mirror," a construct of hundreds of circular pieces that quietly shift to suggest the image of the person looking at it.
This collective of wooden wheels radiates like a living, breathing entity - a feeling reinforced by the material from which it was made. As the beveled ends of the wood bend to match the light and dark areas of the reflected image, it gives the impression of sentient pantomime.
Light and sound
Some of the features in "Act/React" are much more boisterous than others, including a screeching collection of neon by Liz Phillips called "Echo Evolution," which listens for the people in its chamber using ultrasonic scanners and then responds with light and sound.
Glowing coils and other lights twitch and pulsate based on the movements of the audience, although the causes and effects aren't immediately decipherable as you wander around the dark room. It's a curious creation that certainly doesn't give the immediate gratification of some of the other installations.
"To Touch," on the other hand, serves up an instant call-and-response compliments of Janet Cardiff, who softly spotlights a worn and pitted wooden table in a dark room. The table responds to being touched.
Running your hand across the table's surface spawns a series of voices and other sounds from speakers lining the walls, including a ringing telephone and heavy breathing.
These disembodied male and female voices - some of them whispering - are supposed to sound mysterious. They sound a lot like those from the old Calvin Klein "Obsession" television commercials.
"A light shines unto the bed where a man lies naked, his arms repose," one voice says.
"Put your hand on my breast," beckons another.
Fifield notes that the hands-on nature of "To Touch" makes sight unnecessary because the sounds spawn mental images in addition to the tactile sensations.
"I find this piece . . . kind of spiritual," he said.
Stanley A. Miller II covers personal technology for the Journal Sentinel. Reach him at (414) 223-5162 or email@example.com.