5 Senses Paper

Individual and Collective Experiences

In my installation, located in the elevator of the art building, I am attempting to use sight and sound to create an experience relating to the individual vs. the collective. I am also trying to convey certain disconnects that may occur during the art viewing process, as the artist’s personal connection to the work and process is very different than that of the viewer’s relationship.

In the small room I have hung two large scale abstract images of grey-scale ink drip paintings which were originally intended to resemble static. Their connection to static is not as important as the disorienting effect they give the viewer due to the randomness of the drips and the paintings scale. On the ground are a number of ink drawings/writings/scribbles that I impulsively created in an hour. I was writing and drawing whatever came into my head, regardless of how little sense it made, or how accessible these writings would be to the viewer. In the process of making these drawings, I was interested in art’s uses as therapy. That the process of making art, no matter what it looks like or how it could be criticized, is just as (if not more important) than the product itself. This lead me to fold the drawings in different ways while the ink was still wet, so they would somewhat resemble Rorschach ink blot tests. The ink blot tests resemble art viewing, most notably installation art viewing, because it is generally subjective in its interpretation and individualized experience.

The visual aspects of the piece parallel both visual and conceptual themes of works by Yayoi Kusama. Ceiling and wall mirrors in the elevator duplicate the actual paintings so that the environment is more encompassing. Kusama uses multiple mirrored walls in her “Mirror Room” installations. She describes her work as linked to: “Steryotypical action, repetition, accumulation, obsession, the curtain of depersonalization, emptiness, infinity, psychosomatic art, proliferation, ‘vacuum’, cell, segmentation, eternity” (Art Review 79). The artist’s “Infinity Net” paintings, according to author Pamela Wye, “have a Rorschach-like mutability that makes for an intense viewing experience up close” (Wye 96). Kusama uses art making to represent her inner state of being. One interviewer writes: “Notoriously, compulsion born of mental illness has fuelled her practice” (Art Review 76). The artist’s work is deeply personal, yet encompasses the viewer to see what she is seeing.

The recording occurred when I ate a meal by myself at a restaurant where I used to work. There is a continuous stream of dialogue from people at other tables, and then more specific dialogue between me and people I used to work with who would say ‘hi’ as they noticed me. The installation’s sound component depends on the viewer’s presence to be complete. When the elevator door is open and empty, the viewer can hear only static. If the viewer enters the space and the door closes, than the signal of the sound becomes more clearly transmitted to the radio which is projecting it.

Sources:


Art Review. “Yayoi Kusama: To Infinity and Beyond!” 15 (2007): 74-79

Wye, Pamela. “Is She Famous Yet?” Art Journal 57 (1998): 96-97