Articles

David Cotterrell: Monsters of the Id

http://www.hidrazone.com/blog/david-cotterrell-monsters-of-the-id-john-hansard-gallery-11th-february-to-31st-march-2012/

This article is talks about an installation exhibit that by David Cotterrell. The installation is pretty straight forward and simplistic, however its impact on the view is could be monumental. Every person that enters the room and begins to move about, adds the generated population in the projected landscape simulation. The projected scene is an observation of the military action taking place in Afghanistan and the generated people are the on looking civilians. As the masses grow the view of the war becomes skewed and the observer looses site of what is actually going on. The interaction is a critical role in this piece because it relies on a large audience to really get its point across. The more interaction by the public, the more the piece tends to speak out.

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/voice_tunnel.php

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's voice tunnel is an extraordinary installation that relies on observer participation to exist. Visually it is a large tunnel that has large lights arched from side to side like ribs inside a whale. Each participant steps up to a microphone and speaks, screams, or makes some sort of noise that is then converted to a pulse and intensity. This pulse and intensity are then sent along the lights of the tunnel. The installation seems to make the participant feel like they are being heard and that their voice can be can be transformed into something more powerful. The interactions of the observers and the person speaking is also interesting. It seems that this experiment works, in that the person speaking has the attention of almost everyone around. Their words in lights seems to create a certain power of the observers that make them pay closer attention to what is being said.

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/x_is_not_the_new_y.php

This is another project by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. This small object has a lot to say. The device simply displays two proper nouns on the upper and lower screens and make a comparison between the two. This is strikingly powerful. After reading only a few of the 600,000^2 combinations of the words, it really make me consider the two seemingly unrelated names or institutions. It is especially powerful how the comparison works. By throwing in a negative, 'NOT', it defines the bottom word as being some how negative and not as good or proper as the top word. This could be particularly successful as wide spread activist piece. The components are fairly inexpensive and thousands of these devices could be produced and distributed through out a number of communities. Just passing this little device along to few people each would touch the minds of hundreds of thousands of people.