I visited the “Control” exhibit on Saturday. I went by myself and at first had trouble finding the building (I read 13 instead of 31 by accident, but I called the gallery while wondering Mercer Street and eventually found it).
Once you walk in and round the corner of the gallery, it opened up into a large room with one table and two screens close to the entrance and three tables with three screens at the opposite end. I started with the tables furthest from the entrance, just walking around, observing. I was the only person in the gallery besides a few workers who were in the other room. I wasn’t sure what to do with the buttons and knobs so I decided to start in the second room instead. In the other room I was told by a gentleman to “touch everything! All the buttons are meant to be pushed,” and so I went back to first room and began pushing the buttons and turning the knobs. Each table went with the screen above it and each button controlled a different part of the screen. There were speakers underneath the table playing sounds to match the buttons. My favorite was the display on the right side wall of the complicated grid-looking picture. With the knob you could move an indent in the grid and with a button you could pulse the indent to create a wave effect on the rest of the image, the other buttons changed the colors and appearance of the grid.
In the second room, there were four pictures, three of which were all color collages made up of small images all arranged to create a larger picture. The first was a collage on life next to a collage on death, specifically birth and funerals. There were significant difference in the two colleges even though the small pictures were arranged in both to make the same larger picture. The colors were much more vibrant in the life collage and the fact that it was placed next to the duller death collage made this more apparent. There was another color collage called “Color Wheel,” which had a similar method by putting small pictures together with like colors to create a large color wheel. For these three works it was easy to see why they were displayed in the same room, but what confused me was the suitcase picture called “Last Stop, Widgetville” that sat in between the two. I wasn’t sure, and am still not sure, how they connected, although I’m sure the artist did it intentionally.
After looking at the second room I returned to the first one, played around with the buttons once again, took the picture below of myself and then left.
The screens in the first room fit into our media environment by incorporating older technology like the old video game on the screen and the buttons, knobs, and joysticks. Perspectives on life and death are always relevant as well as the color wheel but I’m not sure about the rest of the exhibit. Maybe I’m missing the direction the artist was going in but it felt dated to me, however I suppose the foundations of the present day technology are always relevant.
mmcsurveyofnewmediaspring13 