I can hang a painting on my wall, mount a sculpture on a mantel piece, I can even use pieces of art as furniture, but how are we supposed to incorporate an art installation into our lives? Well, I'm sure there are some super heroes out there with Dadaist installations greeting them as they walk into their apartments, I've just never been to those house parties.
Chapter four of Bruce Wands' book discusses the incursion of digital technology into the world of installation art. It seems obvious, if you want your installation to talk back or move when you move, then just hook up an Arduino. No big deal. In one example Diane Fenster projects these images of the women working in the Irish Laundry prisons on bed sheets suspended over old timey washtubs. The installation is said to have recordings of women singing or whispering in Gaelic. Check out the video:
It's pretty haunting and powerful. Could she have pulled it off without the use of digital technology? Sure, just break out the old eight track recorder and get those voices poppin on the boom box. No big deal, just art. But we have to admit, that some digital tech just makes the whole thing a little easier to pull off.
He also shows off some work by Shih-chieh Huang Where he makes this huge interactive collage/sculpture. In the video above you can see some of Shih Chieh Huang's more recent work, using videos of eyes to control robots that do things. Pretty meta.
All joking aside, just looking through these installations and seeing how much easier digital technology has made them to exist, I feel like we should all have a little installation in our lives. Maybe in our homes, on our commutes... it should be a way of life.
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