The current show at InterAccess is really good. Both artists are from Finland, where, according to curator Nina Czegledy, "social awareness, art and technology fuse seamlessly." Well, I don't know much about Finland, but I know what I like! Minna Långström created huge Smurfy blue table and chairs that dwarf the adult viewer and make you feel small. There is also a huge dangling crib toy, twice the size of my head. When you clamber up onto the chair you can blow virtual bubbles with a big orange wand. Inside the bubbles are violent video scenes from the war in Iraq. Pulling the cord on the crib toy triggers the sounds of war. The bubbles were not activating when I was there (apparently some overly interactive art viewer had been underneath the table rearranging cables the day before) and so I am going back for sure before the show closes on February 11th.
Seamless is a good word. The installation, by Jaakko Niemelä is also elegant. [SPOILER ALERT. If you haven't seen the show yet stop reading now.] As you enter the gallery you see a wall sized grid of video feeds. There is a war or insurgence or disaster going on. The cameras flip past emergency vehicles, ladders, flashing lights, tumbled down structures, chasm-like spaces, chaos. The sounds are clipped, harsh and anxious-making — sirens, explosions, gunfire, men making urgent calls and giving directions with the tinny voices of megaphones and walkie talkies. The grid of video is always scrolling, like a security console, the cameras numbered at the bottom of each panel. As you proceed into the space you see around the corner, where a cluster of electronic toy helicopters, tanks, ambulances and fire trucks and emergency vehicles are nestled into a jumble of cables, clutter and spinning cameras, their little toy sounds activated and amplified.
Both pieces were immersive and elaborate but simple in design. And both, for me, invoked the infurating combination of cultural infantilization with dire and violent world events.
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The current show at InterAccess is really good. Both artists are from Finland, where, according to curator Nina Czegledy, "social awareness, art and technology fuse seamlessly." Well, I don't know much about Finland, but I know what I like! Minna Långström created huge Smurfy blue table and chairs that dwarf the adult viewer and make you feel small. There is also a huge dangling crib toy, twice the size of my head. When you clamber up onto the chair you can blow virtual bubbles with a big orange wand. Inside the bubbles are violent video scenes from the war in Iraq. Pulling the cord on the crib toy triggers the sounds of war. The bubbles were not activating when I was there (apparently some overly interactive art viewer had been underneath the table rearranging cables the day before) and so I am going back for sure before the show closes on February 11th.
Seamless is a good word. The installation, by Jaakko Niemelä is also elegant. [SPOILER ALERT. If you haven't seen the show yet stop reading now.] As you enter the gallery you see a wall sized grid of video feeds. There is a war or insurgence or disaster going on. The cameras flip past emergency vehicles, ladders, flashing lights, tumbled down structures, chasm-like spaces, chaos. The sounds are clipped, harsh and anxious-making — sirens, explosions, gunfire, men making urgent calls and giving directions with the tinny voices of megaphones and walkie talkies. The grid of video is always scrolling, like a security console, the cameras numbered at the bottom of each panel. As you proceed into the space you see around the corner, where a cluster of electronic toy helicopters, tanks, ambulances and fire trucks and emergency vehicles are nestled into a jumble of cables, clutter and spinning cameras, their little toy sounds activated and amplified.
Both pieces were immersive and elaborate but simple in design. And both, for me, invoked the infurating combination of cultural infantilization with dire and violent world events.
- sally mckay 2-02-2006 7:08 pm