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From 2001 to late 2008 the installation was in storage. At the end of 2008, I traveled to the east coast to pack the installation into a truck and have it shipped out to Treasure Island, CA (I live in San Francisco) where I resurrected it, thinking that I was going to take it to Burning Man. Unfortunately, for a complex of reasons, it became clear that getting it to Burning Man 2009 wasn’t tenable. Which brings us to where things stand today. This page will chronicle the life and times of ROOM.

Before going on about ROOM let me just say that I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Granted I made it, but I am an Art History major. I think it’s probably one the most significant things I’ll ever make, That said, it’s complicated, shoddily constructed, and overwhelming; I’ve found that 75% people who experience ROOM feel somewhat uncomfortable in it and don’t know how to interpret it. They recognize there is clearly “something” to it but that something is usually disturbing. Another 20%, who seem to have more experience viewing artwork, seem to take an interest, despite some discomfort, and are willing to explore beyond the surface. They too eventually get overwhelmed, but leave feeling a bit more optimistic about the “something” that’s going on with the piece. The last 5% includes a handful of people who are blown away by the experience and tend to recognize something about themselves in it. I know I will never work on another project like this one.  That said, nothing will make me happier than striking the match that will reduce it to ashes.

What is ROOM made of?
ROOM is an installation, which basically means that it’s an environment. As opposed to a sculpture that you stand in front of and admire, ROOM is the space between approximately 27 sculptures. The sculptures are made from a collection of recycled furniture, and other ready-made objects, which have been disassembled and reassembled with mixed-matched parts. Most of the sculptures have been whitewashed and decorated with gold hand written text and illustrations. Additional metal, plastic, fiber and paper elements have also been added as well. The pallet for the piece is mostly white, black and gold.  Many of the sculptures are interactive and feature lighting, sound, and kinetic elements that are driven by motors. All the sculptures are also on wheels, which makes it something of a movable feast that can be reconfigured and recontextualized by it’s environment.

roland on chair

The His-Story of ROOM
ROOM started with an old school chair that a friend brought home one day after work. I was living in New York City that summer, spending most of my time reading about art, going to see art, and trying to make art. I ended up taking the chair apart, stripping it bare, reassembling it in a new way, whitewashing it, drawing pictures on it, transcribing handwritten text around the pictures, and adding other elements, thus transforming it into a character.

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I’ll go into more detail below about what each of the sculptures is about. For now, let me just say that the chair is no longer one that you’d want to have to sit on. Before my friend had brought the chair home, I’d already started working on a project journal. This journal became the place where I created the blueprint for ROOM. At some point, I ran out of pages in the first journal and started a second one. The first journal was on paper, the second on vellum. Here are two slideshows of the journals.

Journal #1

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Journal #2

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With summer coming to an end, I returned to Boston to complete my final year of college. It was clear that ROOM would be the basis of my last year of study. At this point my friends started giving me stuff to incorporate into the project. By the end of the year I’d worked on about ten of the pieces. After graduation it was clear that I’d have to get a studio to finish the project, so I rented a space in the 59 Amory Street building in Roxbury, MA. At the time, it seemed like a good plan to take six-months off to finish the installation, so I finished school and got to work.

At first things went surprisingly well. I was making lots of progress and was able to stay focused on getting the project done. After a couple months, however, I became aware of the fact that ROOM was getting away from me. It’s scope just kept expanding and I was getting sucked in deeper and deeper. I’d never really had such an experience with a piece of artwork before so I took it as a sign that I was on to something. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that what I was on to would take much more effort to get out of ROOM then it took to get in.

Five months in, things were getting kinda scary. Conceptually the installation was taking me down a rabbit-hole of deconstruction that was worse than quicksand, but which always had me thinking I was around the corner from a breakthrough. Fortunately, my friends and family threw me my first lifeline and extracted me from ROOM by reminding me that it was time to start looking for a job. I was lucky to land a job managing a cool non-profit gallery which meant that ROOM became something that I worked on in my spare time. In small doses it was possible to make progress again and I continued working on it like this for a couple of years. I also started some other art and curatorial projects to help even things out a bit.

Eventually, I graduated from managing the non-profit art gallery to run a commercial gallery. That was really exciting and allowed me to expand the community of people who knew about ROOM. At this point, I started to get more stuff from people who found things that they thought should be incorporated into the project. ROOM is something of a magnet for material culture. After a year at the new gallery ROOM was close to being done. I was also realizing that my time as a gallery director was limited, that the art business was not my calling and that I was  interested in marketing. It was time for a transition.

Before putting up a shingle as a marketing consultant, I thought it would be a good time to finish ROOM once and for all. I remembered how it had kicked my ass years before and was frankly pretty frightened about engaging with it on a full-time basis. But, you only live once so I jumped back in. Let me just say that things got pretty ugly. I ended up going into a pretty dark place, but I managed to paint myself out of the corner about six months later. I opened it to the public as part of the city wide open studios, people came, positive reviews were written, and a handful of people told me it was the most amazing piece of artwork they’d ever seen.

When the show was over, it was sad to pack up the studio and put the installation in storage. I’d had hopes of using the positive reviews and momentum to garner an exhibition opportunity in New York City at some hoity-toity gallery, but the few opportunities that materialized slipped through my fingers for one reason or another. I did end up showing pieces of the installation here and there but I felt that it never got the attention it deserved. That said, I got back to work and on with my life and relegated the installation to deep storage where it could age (or faster, depending on your perspective). It was certainly not completely out of mind, but it was out of sight.

In 2005, I moved to San Francisco where I learned that west coast culture is quite different from what I grew up with on the east coast. This included the culture around the arts, which I think is represented best by the Burning Man festival which takes place once a year in the Nevada desert. Though I had known of Burning Man for many years, as an east coaster I was highly skeptical. I assumed it was a hippy commune of some sort and pretty much wrote it off as something that wasn’t for me. Despite this attitude, several friends convinced me that I had to go to Burning Man, which I ultimately did. The experience was completely unique and inspiring.

That trip  helped me understand the cultural differences I was experiencing. My over-generalized perception of the difference between east coast and west coast culture, with respect to the arts, is that east-coasters focus more on creating things whereas west-coasters focus more on creating experiences. My immediate sense was that ROOM was positioned between these two approaches.

ROOM is certainly chock-full of sculptural things but the installation is really about the experiences that take place in the space between the objects. I realize that sounds rather theoretical, but ROOM is something of a stage-set in my mind. The valuable experiences are the actions that happen on the stage. I suppose this is part of the reason why I feel that the sculptures themselves are ultimately expendable.

Sometime shortly after my second trip out to Burning Man, I realized that it might be an interesting place to bring ROOM. If anyone was going to appreciate the project it would be the community there, and it would get exposure to tons of people. So, I went to the east coast, packed the installation up in a truck and had it shipped to a warehouse on Treasure Island. It was a bit damaged from the trip, so I spent the next few months fixing it up and resurrecting it. I actually enjoyed repairing it and didn’t get sucked into any vortexes …. though I can say that seeing it up and running definitely made me intensely uncomfortable.

The question now is whether or not it will actually find it’s way out to the dessert. To be continued ….

The Floorplan & Choreography
All the sculptures in the installation are on wheels allowing them to be moved and rearranged depending on where the installation is installed. That said, there is a general floorplan that I’ve adhered to in the past. In the representation below, the installation is situated in an enclosure structure. As viewers approach the installation they are faced with a carpet made of gold astroturf which forms the shape of the letter “Y”. Where the carpet forks, there is a sign with the following text:

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
There are two entrances to this ROOM. Each entrance is guarded by one of two identical-twin brothers. One brother always lies, and one brother always tells the truth. Behind one entrance lies life, behind the other lies death. You can ask the same question to both brother to determine which door to enter. What is that question?

The answer to the riddle is on the back of the sign (the answer is also under the image below). The purpose of this riddle is to take the viewer’s mind off what they were thinking about before they arrived at the installation. I used to think of it in culinary terms as a “cleansing of the palette”. When the installation was originally installed there were actually two such experiences. The first took place as the audience entered the gallery space. As they walked through the doorway, they would see a video camera obviously positioned above the doorway. Once through the doorway they were confronted with a video screen that was obviously getting a video feed from the camera over the doorway. But something was off because the video showed someone walking up to the doorway, but there wasn’t anyone behind the viewer. Most people then noticed something very familiar about the person on the screen, it was them! What was happening, was that the video was delayed by about 15 seconds. The effect of this experience was intended to be jarring enough to distract viewers from anything they might have been thinking about before entering. It also tended to have the effect of making people laugh.

Floor Plan, ROOM, Roland Smart

The answer to the riddle is a question:
“Which door would your brother tell me to enter if I wanted to live?”

The carpet led to a curtain with two slits in it in the place of doorways. The area around the slits were painted like subway turnstiles to evoke the sense that viewers were descending into subterranean experience. There are other references to subways, basements and catacombs in the installation which stemmed from my interest in Gaston Bachelard’s book, The Poetics of Space. This book talks about the psychological significant of domestic spaces such as attics and basements. In Gaston’s estimation, the home is an important representation of the human psyche.

The main space of the installation is defined by six blackboards that line the perimeter of the space. Each blackboard offers a lesson of sorts and focuses on a human sense or a combination of senses that work together synesthetically. Details on each blackboard can be found below in the section that discusses each sculpture individually.

Many of the sculptures incorporate lighting, sound, or kinetic elements and require power. Power is delivered through a tangle of extension cords that are held in place with IV stands and other sculptural elements. The installation was originally designed to be a dark environment and viewers were given electricians glasses, which have lights on them, to help them see. Some light is also produced by the sculptures themselves.

The floor of the installation was also littered with gold children’s roller-skates.

The Sculptures, Characters, Personalities & Desires
On way to interpret ROOM is to understand if from a psychological perspective as a representation of the mind. The project takes a somewhat post-structuralist view such that there is no center (or ego). Instead, there is a stage on which desires compete for attention, form coalitions, and constantly interact. There’s an interesting connection to Darwinism here because one way to interpret the interaction of desires is to look at them through the lens of an evolutionary theory. Alternatively, you might interpret the sculptures to be characters on a theatrical set.

And yet, the sculptures also seem to be the set. Thus, the distinction between set/stage and the actors/characters is deflated. In other words, the actors become the set. This interpretation inherits much of it’s rhetoric to Jean Baudrillard, whose Simulacra and Simulation significantly influenced ROOM. With this in mind, ROOM attempts to blur the boundaries between set, actors, and audience members. As the sculptures interact with each other, they cause audience members move follow choreographed paths through the project … as if audience memebers were actors following a script.

ROOM also blurs the boundaries between three of the most important spaces for the artist, the gallery, the studio and the home. As I mentioned above, ROOM was initially shown in my home which was also my studio, and which became a gallery. The project essentially collapses these three spaces into one.

ROOM inflates spaces as well. In fact, the curtain that separates the outside from the inside of the project just simulates this perception as there there is no definable inside or outside because the piece is defined by the space between objects. As the installation has no static layout, because everything is on wheels, passing through the curtain does not signify entering or exiting the experience. As you might have guessed, the curtain at the entrance is also a reference to the Wizard of Oz. In this case, viewers are invited behind the screen into the puppet master’s world. It goes without saying that Dorothy’s dream was completely real in so far as she really dreamed it, and it changed her life.

Of the approximately 27 sculptures that make up ROOM, I approached about half as if they were characters. For example, the blackboards that sit around the periphery of the above  layout are not quite characters as much as lessons made by an unseen character. Each character has a unique personality, philosophy and/or desire. The objects that are illustrated on the character’s skin relate to it’s identity and the transcriptions of texts that are written on their bodies are often directly related to this philosophy. Sometimes they are direct quotes from a book, but I also included other sources.

The Transcriptions
By transcriptions, I am referring to all the handwritten text that can be found on the skin of the sculptures. I like to think of the transcriptions as an internal monologue that the characters wear on their sleeve. As the name suggests, the writing on the sculptures is transcribed from some source. Depending on the sculpture in question it could be from one of the literary inspirations for the work, the project journals, e-mail exchanges, and voice-mails. Finally, there are stream of consciousness sections that capture imaginary dialogues between the character I was writing on and the other characters that are surrounding it.

When I initially started transcribing, I tried to hold a book and one hand and write with the other. This turned about the be pretty tough because I had moved around the objects as I wrote. To resolve this issue, I read the material into a recording device and then played it back through my stereo system. This worked well for a while but eventually it was a bit frustrating because it might go faster than I could write and get ahead of me. I also noticed that stuff I was thinking about would get in the way of focusing on listening to the reading voice. Since they were both my voice, this made it even more challenging.

Eventually, I switched to a mini-recorder that I could keep in my shirt pocket, which made it easy to rewind when necessary. The recorder also had a function which allowed me to slow down or speed up the playback, which had the effect of changing the pitch of my voice. Finally, I used this device with headphones, which helped to drown out my own internal monologue.

Eventually, things started to get weird though because I now had three versions of my own voice in my head. The slowed down deep Roland voice, my normal internal monologue, and a high-pitched fast Roland voice. It turns out that transcribing text through a micro-recorder for several hours at a time can drive you crazy. It’s mostly ok while you’re actually working, but the voices don’t want to stop when you put the recorder down. This is especially pronounced with the earphones in because it already sounds like they’re in your head. Plus, engaging in any sort of imaginary dialogue between two of the characters would put a bunch of voices in my head that just wouldn’t shut up. I found the best way to deal with this was to get some exercise, or put on some really loud music. The hard part was trying not to think about the voices later when you were ready to turn the music off. I used to joke that it felt like being a schitzophrenic, but in retrospect I’m not sure I didn’t induce such as state. I can’t imagine how professional transcribers deal with this.

I should also note that some of the pieces use the text as texture. For example, words flow in a wood grain pattern, form bigger letters (words made of words), or other forms. There are also places where letters are replaced with symbols and/or numbers (such as binary code and pi). Ultimately text and texture are also blurred. For example, on the sculpture made with parts from a sewing machine, the form of the stitch replaces the letter. The underlying idea is that stitches and letters merely give tangible form to some pattern in nature, or meme.

The Sound Scape
ROOM includes a variety of sculptures that produce sound. Some produce sound through physical movement and others include speakers. Most of the recordings are merely altered versions of the material I read into the mini-recorder, though there is one piece that offers up voicemail messages from the period during which I was creating ROOM.

The most significant sounds element, however, is almost impossible to hear. I realize that sounds like a contradiction, but ROOM includes a large custom sub-woofer that is capable of producing low frequency sounds at the bottom of the hearing range. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to be in the installation when this speaker is playing the recording but it can have a dramatic effect, particularly in enclosed spaces.

The recoding itself is a consistent sine-wave that changes in volume. There are several sequences, but the most profound is the track that slowly progressed from zero volume up to full volume and the abruptly cuts out. Because you “feel” this sound (note the earlier reference to synethesia) rather than hearing it, and because it is subtle, most people don’t notice it until it cuts out. I personally experience a sense of relief when it cuts out because low frequency sounds has the effect of making some people feel anxious or nauseous. Sounds fun, eh?

The Sculptures
Please be patient with the content in this section, I’m adding it in as time permits!

  • character: The Satellite
  • desire: consume, eat, digest, receive
  • philosophy: Philosophy of Logic with a side of Platonic Realism
  • description: This sculpture is made from a four legged table, with one leg repositioned in the center and with the other three legs redistributed around the perimeter. The result is that the table can never have all it’s legs touching the ground while sitting on a flat surface. Thus, It’s always off balance. The surface of the table features three cast resin place-mats, which are back-light and contain different flowers that are associated with each meal. There is a plastic dome over the surface of the table with an antenna/beacon extending out of the top. Inside the dome is a plumb-line pendulum. Around the edge of the table are a collection of plastic illustrated icons of kitchen implements. The entire table occasionally shakes, which activates the pendulum. The beacon up top also has a light that turns on an off.

Satellite

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  • CHARACTER: The Black Sheep
  • DESIRE: Rebel, self-destruct, defy
  • PHILOSOPHY: Existential Nihilism
  • DESCRIPTION: This is the one object in the installation that is black-washed rather than white-washed. Thus, the name the Black Sheep. The sculpture was once a cobblers bench, but has a variety of pieces that were originally part of other objects from the installation. In a way, it’s a repository for the parts that just don’t fit. It also features an anchor, a screw stake designed to chain dogs do a lawn, some shoe shining brushes, fake pearls (of wisdom, of course), an air sickness bag, three cocktail umbrellas, and a speaker that plays some of the transcription recordings at different speeds forwards and backwards.

Black-Sheep

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  • CHARACTER: The Shit Bird
  • DESIRE: Defecate, examine, reflect
  • PHILOSOPHY: Narcissistic Dualism with a side of Moral Relativism
  • DESCRIPTION: This Shit Bird is one part toilet and one part side table lamp. The neck of the lamp has been reattached such that it extends like the head of a goose looking at it’s own anus. In this case the bird has laid a piece of gold shit rather than an egg, thus collapsing birth and death in a mixed metaphor. The bird also includes a latch to lock the seat down, a tray that hold several fake diamond rings, and some band-aids. The head has a light in it which flickers red. The Shit Bird says “you are what you eat”.

Shit-Bird

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  • CHARACTER: The Dirigible
  • DESIRE: Fly, Explore, Defy Physics
  • PHILOSOPHY: Epiphenomenalism
  • DESCRIPTION: The dirigible is composed of an oscillating fan and an old nautical buoy. The fan turns on an off in an attempt to propel itself forward. It fails for two reasons, first the blades of the fan have been flattened, and the balloon (buoy) that it is blowing is attached to itself. The buoy is held above the platform by a welded chain armature.

escapist

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  • CHARACTER: The Red Herring / Blue Fish
  • DESIRE: ideation, dissection, transform
  • PHILOSOPHY: Non-Solipsistic Post-Structuralsim
  • DESCRIPTION: This piece features the head of a bluefish head that has been split down the center, and rearranged in a cast block of clear polyester resin so that the two halves permanently stare at each other. In between the two heads, there is a light bulb that goes on and off. Over the light bulb there are a series of letters cut out of newspaper that read “Catch 22” and which refer to a dialog in the book of that same name in which a psychiatrist asks the protagonist what fish remind him of and he replies other fish. The psychiatrist asks what other fish remind him of, and he repeats “other fish”. Out of the top of the block of resin extends two lampshades that feature nautical illustrations. Under the block of resin is a shelf that hold three plates. Each of the plates feature an illustration of a flower on the front, along with dissected section of the flowers on the reverse side. The flowers are the same as those found in the place mats from the Satellite. Below the shelf there is a selection of miniature bowling pins that have needles in them (pins & needles). This sculpture sits in front of the Satellite, which used to be a table, and sits in front of board #5 which is about taste and smell. I suppose it’s appropriate that I ate the body of the fish … so it’s now part of me.

Fish Head Lamp

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  • CHARACTER: The Prisoner
  • DESIRE: escape, freedom, flight
  • PHILOSOPHY: Cocktail of Defeatism and Determinism
  • DESCRIPTION: The Prisoner consists of a steel cage in which a chair is hanging. The chair had screws sticking out of the backrest, and nails and razor blades sticking out of the seat. The seat has a cylinder of polyester resin embedded in it which is back-light. There are illustrations on the chair of other chairs, as well as of impossible objects. The chair also has a section cut out of one of it’s legs, which is sitting on the seat. The floor of the cage is decorated with illustrations of fish, there is a plunger sitting in the corner, a drain the floor, and a shower head that comes down from the ceiling. The inside roof of the cage has illustrations of nests on it. The entire cage is wrapped in a vinyl curtain that has images of birds on it. The cage occasionally shakes which causes the chair to swing. The prisoner is a torture chamber in which you can’t sit or stand. This piece sits in front of the The Gambler & The Coach/Couch, which gazes on the performance as a hyperbole of it’s own musical chairs.

Prisoner

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  • CHARACTER: The Transcriptionist
  • DESIRE: encode, organize, narrate
  • PHILOSOPHY: Evangelical Buddhism through the lens of Modernism
  • DESCRIPTION: The transcriptional is composed of an old sewing machine that sits atop a portable folding workbench. The sewing machine is powered by a foot peddle, upon which sits an Underwood typewriter. Thus, the stitch is connected to they typewriter both literally and symbolically. The transcriptions on the body of the piece are made from letters in some places, symbols in others, and nonsense characters in others. The sewing machine has draws that extend out of the machine and which are internally illuminated. There is also a lamp that hangs under the workbench surface which is intermittently illuminated.

transcriptionist

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  • CHARACTER: The Professor
  • DESIRE: teach, pontificate, neologize, lecture, rhetoricize
  • PHILOSOPHY: Modern Post-Structuralism
  • DESCRIPTION: The Professor is a podium made from an old school desk and a coat rack. The top surface of the podium has three tuning forks embedded it it (A, C, E) which serve as a key to open the desk. Inside there is a plexiglass panel that has additional transcriptions and illustrations on it. The top also features a tuning harmonica, and a conductors wand. On the left side there is a combined hammer and crow bar. On the right side there is a stethoscope. A vacuum tube extends out of the bottom of the desk and exhales hot air intermitently. The central column of the coat rack is perforated in three place allowing a three way scale to balance half way up it’s length. Each scale tray is the top of a cup that appears to be overflowing with polyester resin (i.e. these cups are half as big as they need to be). These cups are illuminated from within.

The-Professor

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  • CHARACTER: The Gambler & The Coach/Couch
  • DESIRE: Play, gamble, take risks, consume, be entertained
  • PHILOSOPHY: Utilitarian Hedonism
  • DESCRIPTION: This piece is composed of two sculptures that are linked together by welded steel chains. The larger sculpture is made from an old buffet table. The doors front has been altered to refer to a casino deck of one arm bandits. In this case, however, the pull arms are flexible and have swiss arm knives on the ends. The doors are faced with gold pennies, but swing open to reveal nothing inside. The top of the buffet table has a lazy susan that has been modified to refer to a roulette style game. Other objects sit on the surface of the buffet including three flowers (the same as on the placemats in the Satelite sculpture and on the plates in the The Red Herring / Blue Fish sculpture). The words that are transcribed on the piece form different patterns including, wood grain, larger letters, and checker board. On the side of the cabinet there is a wheel from a plumbers snake, and on the other side there is a mailbox.

Gambler-Coach

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  • CHARACTER: The Ball & Chain
  • DESIRE: punishment, hunger, death
  • PHILOSOPHY: Law of The Jungle (big fish eats little fish) or Sado-Masochistic Anarchism
  • DESCRIPTION: This piece features a 1-foot-bear trap, welded chain, and a bowling ball. The bowling ball is suspended over the trap trigger, on which sits a large gold fish eating a smaller gold fish. The fish has a light in it which intermittently turns on and off. Nautical illustrations are drawn on the bowling ball.

Ball-&-Chain

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  • CHARACTER: The Director
  • DESIRE: Authority, control, voyeurism
  • PHILOSOPHY: The Golden Rule (he with to gold rules)
  • DESCRIPTION: This piece is made from what looks like a traditional white gallery pedestal, with speaker screens attached to one side, tail pipes extending from the bottom, and an amplifier on another side. The pedestal is actually a large sub-woofer that produced sub-sonic (sub-audible) sound that viewers can feel but not hear. The top of the pedestal has a veneer of fake brick on which a directors chair sits along with a shoe horn and a dusting brush. The transcriptions on this piece are somewhat unique because they are painted in white on the white surface. The Director puts the “b” in subtle.

Director

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  • CHARACTER: The Environmentalist
  • DESIRE: Observe, monitor
  • PHILOSOPHY: Analytical Materialism
  • DESCRIPTION: This piece features a folding laundry rack that is mounted to a small exhibition pedestal similar to the Director sculpture. The top of the pedestal is carpeted with gold astroturf, on which sits a Hygro-Thermometer that has been covered in translucent gold film. The piece also has a small speaker in it which plays audio recorded from my voicemail at different speeds forwards and backwards.

enviornmentalist

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Other Objects

Two Pyramids

Triangles

There are two stands that each hold a pyramid sculpture.

  • The first is a book that unfolds as you pull open the side of the pyramid, each side getting smaller as you open it further. In the center there is a ball of white ribbon which has a single line of transcription down it’s length. A safety pin keeps it from unraveling. The book is reminiscent of a Russian nested Babushka doll, only the sides are all connected as the nest into each other.
  • The second has two standard front door peep holes embedded in it, one in the center of one side and the other in a corner. The stand also has a lazer pointer on it that you can point into the hole you are not looking through to illuminate the inside. If you look through the peephole in the corner first you will see a circle. If you look through the peephole in the side, you will see a wire bent into the shape of spiral. Thus, looking at the same object from two different perspectives completely changes how we see it.

IV Stands

IV-Stands

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The installation also includes a collection of decorated IV stands that hold the extension cords that run back and forth between the sculptures.

The Boards

bloards

The main space of the installation is defined by six blackboards that line the perimeter of the space. Each blackboard offers a lesson of sorts and focuses on a human sense or a combination of senses that work together synesthetically.

Lesson #1

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Lesson #2

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Lesson #3

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Lesson #4

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Lesson #5

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Lesson #6

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Some Of What I Was Reading (some of these are hard to find)

Installation Art
Davies, Hugh: Onorato, Ronald. Blurring the Boundaries – Installation art 1969- 1996.  Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. C&C Offset Printing. Ltd. 1997.
Nicolas de Oliveira; Nicola Oxley; Michael Petry & text by Michael Archer. Installation Art, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London. 1994

On the subject of space:
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space, translator: Maria Jolas. Beacon Press, Boston. 1969
Colomina, Beatriz (editor). Sexuality & Space, A Collection of Essays. Princeton Architectural Press. 1992.
Nakajima, Kazuo. Uneasy Rooms: The Concept of Space in Modern Japan, World Policy Journal, Winter 1996.
Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Existence, Space & Architecture, Books That Matter, 1972
Rizzolatti Giacomo; Luciano, Fadiga; Leonardo Fogassi; Vittoria Gasllese. The Space Around Us, Science. July 1997.

On the subject of performance:
Michel Benamou & Charles Caramello (editors). Performance in Post-Modern Culture.  Coda Press – University of Wisconsin. 1977.
Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory.  Routledge. 1988.
Turner, Victor. The Anthropology of Performance, PAJ Publications. 1986

On the subject of Post-Modernism:
Baudrillard, Jean. The Hyper-realism of Simulation -  Selected Writings.  Stanford, 1988.
Benjamine, Walter. Illuminations, Schocken Books, New York. 1955.
Derrida, Jaques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore, 1976.
Flax, Jane. Thinking Fragments – Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Post-Modern in the Contemporary West. University of California Press. 1990.
Hassan, Ihab. The Post-Modern Turn – Essays in Post-Modern Theory and Culture. The Ohio State University Press. 1987.

Some Context:
Bloomer, Carolyn. Principles of Visual Perception, Design Press. 1989.
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century.  An October Book, MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass. 1991.
Duncan, Carol. Civilizing Rituals. Inside Publ;ic Art Museums. Routledge, 1995.
Fleche, Anne. When a Door is a Jar, or out it the Theater: Tennessee Williams and Queer Space, Theatre Journal, May 1995.
Karp, Ivan; Lavine, Steven: Exhibiting Cultures: The poetics and Politics of Museum Display, Smithsonian, 1991.
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