PLEASE TOUCH

"This was one of the best openings I've ever been to here at Forum," blurted Kimberly McClure at the opening for the show this last week. The premiss for the show Please Touch was to gather an audience to critique and explore the idea of physical interaction as a key component in a work of art. Five Cranbrook artists (Tom Friel, Seth Keller, Corina Reynolds, Tricia Stackle, and Erin Yuasa) showed their work inviting the visitors to interact. Some of the works were playful, looking to children's toys as inspiration for ways to entice viewers to touch. Other works evoked the language of tools to communicate the message "please touch."

Erin Yuasa's sand boxes functioned beautifully in the space between aesthetic object and tool, inviting visitors to handle the paddles and funnels in the box while at the same time creating a space to think about the action of interacting, both with the object and the other people sharing the experience with you.

PLEASE TOUCH

Trisha Stackle. Wall Installation I: Moonlight Melody, 2009, fabric, rice, foam, wood, latex paint, 4' W x 8' H x 6" D

PLEASE TOUCH opens this Friday at Forum Gallery at 6pm in Bloomfield Hills, Mi.

Artists:

Tom Friel

Seth Keller

Corina Reynolds

Tricia Stackle

Erin Yuasa

For more information about PLEASE TOUCH visit detroiter MOTORCITYBLOG.net motorcity motorcityblog detroit music art events: PLEASE TOUCH - Cranbrook Forum Gallery Bloomfield Hills - Fri 2/19

Martha Mysko—5x5 cube

Containment, control, concealment, dependency, memorialization, obsolescence, and erasure. Martha Mysko's new work, a 5x5 cube sheathed in clear vinyl, showcases a tight collection of objects all depending on one another in an intricate network of viewer associations. Throughout her work, Mysko carries a mixed bag of tricks including links to memory and forgetting, puzzles and critical observation, and a firm control over the dependency of a large array of elements. In our discussion of the work, ideas of light and memory were strong veins of dialogue. The cube, lit from inside—red and yellow—by an overhead projector, took on two personalities as the environmental life changed from day to night. These personalities line up with Mysko's previous works relating to home/residential spaces; furthermore, these personalities, coming from the daily light and living cycles a house goes through, seem to question who's home. The lights are on. Is someone home, is this a memory of events past, or is this a cleaver way of deterring trespassers. In this work, like others, Mysko utilizes a white washing technique to further remove information allowing the red and yellow light to wash over the installation, bathing it in an empty, questioning glow.

Kelly Dobson's Blendie

An interactive object shown in video form.

From Dobson's statement about Blendie:

Blendie is an interactive, sensitive, intelligent, voice controlled blender with a mind of its own. Materials are a 1950's Osterizer blender altered with custom made hardware and software for sound analysis and motor control.

People induce the blender to spin by sounding the sounds of its motor in action. A person may growl low pitch blender-like sounds to get it to spin slow (Blendie pitch and power matches the person) and the person can growl blender-style at higher pitches to speed up Blendie. The experience for the participant is to speak the language of the machine and thus to more deeply understand and connect with the machine. The action may also bring about personal revelations in the participant. The participant empathizes with Blendie and in this new approach to a domestic appliance, a conscious and personally meaningful relationship is facilitated.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about viewer interaction and to what degree I want my viewers to interact with my objects. In this piece, Kelly Dobson is able to entice the viewer into imagining them self in the interaction.

Art and Interaction

Since my crit on Wednesday, and after the gallery talk this morning with Jane Lackey, I have been thinking a lot about how a viewer engages with work of art. In the new series of work I have started the objects are designed with the intention of highlighting the didactic experience, focusing on what can be learned through interaction. I have always been interested in how a viewer's willingness to physically engage with a work shifts depending on the location of an object. When a viewer enters a gallery space, it seems as though an invisible wall is subconsciously built in front of a work thereby limiting their potential exchange. On a trip to San Francisco a few years back, I visited the de Young museum and saw a piece by Breton. Physical interaction with the piece was very strongly implied, on it was a big red button with the words "Push Me," yet not one visitor pushed the button. In contrast, in San Diego's Balboa park, sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle seemed to invite physical involvement. While I am not interested in placing my work in the same outdoor, public environment, I am interested in why this difference in allowing one's self to interact happens.

In a discussion with Rosemary Dardick earlier this week, she talked about how these subconscious physical barriers that occur in the gallery space must be rooted in the traditions of art display. It can be impossible to communicate that an object should be touched because these rules are so strongly anchored to the space. In her gallery talk today, Jane Lackey spoke about a map-like piece in her show at the Lemberg Gallery that is made with the intent of being opened, but that is rendered untouchable because of its fragility. As a result, the function of the piece is denied to the viewer and therefore becomes a space for the viewer to ponder what the experience would be like. In Celia Butler's new work, a stack of unassembled boxes creates the same space for the viewer to think about the experience. This lead me to consider the importance of physical engagement with art. Can the same message be delivered without the interaction? Should the viewer interact? Does it give to much away to let them manipulate the object? and conversely, If the interaction is necessary, how do you break down those barriers?

Art and Everyday Life

Today in critical studies, Lane Relyea proposed a question while talking about art pushing to infiltrate everyday life in past years. He asked, why do we want art to be a part of life? Why do we want to merge art seamlessly into daily life? For me this brought up another question, "why don't I want art to be integrated into life?" In my mind, design is where art meets life.

For a while now I have been rocking back and forth on the merits of design and its ability to bridge the gap between art and life. On one hand is this utopian view for a future world, where every object is well designed and durable, yielding less need for consumer consumption. On the other I look at design as a lesser form of art, creating for the consumer rather than for the self. For some unknown reason I have the strong urge to separate art and life.