Audio available - Accessible Arts Supported Studio Network Forum

The audio from Supported Studio Networks: Possibility and Potential has just been released. If you want to read a previous blog post about the project, see this previous post of mine.

Artist John Demos and I are panellists at the beginning of this one, Building Culture, but you can find the rest of the audios on the Accessible Arts site.

Supported Studio Networks - new questions in art?

This post is an addendum to two previous blog posts about John Demos' residency at the Big Fag Press, and his exhibition at The Cross Art Projects that followed.

Josie Cavallaro of Accessible Arts came to visit John during his residency, and asked me to be a panellist on a forum she was organising at the MCA on 7 November about Supported Studio Networks.

Me, John Demos and Kevin Meagher at the MCA

John and I were to be panellists on the section called 'Building Culture', and we had to talk about various aspects of the project we'd just done.

So I sat down with John and chatted about the project, what he'd gotten out of it, what things worked well, what challenges we had, etc. I ended up with a good set of notes both of us could use for the panel. I also had a few notes about some questions we had faced during the course of the project about disclosure and journalist responsibility.

The forum Supported Studio Networks: Possibility and Potential took place at the MCA. Glenn Barkley was the opening speaker, and other panellists included Damien Minton and Evan Hughes. Many of the delegates were key figures in the Sydney art community.

I was a little nervous, but several people said I was very engaging, so I suppose it went well. I was very proud of John who I'm sure was just as nervous as I was. His speech was great too.

An article by Gina Fairley emerged a few weeks later on arts hub called 'Is Outsider Art finally over?' which quoted several of the things I'd said. I wish they had quotes John too though.

I wrote a small response to the forum for the Runway news section, 'Out with Outsider Art'.

The Accessible Arts forum podcast and transcript will be available soon in 2014 online.

Program for the Section 'Building Culture'

Anish Kapoor

I've been wanting to do a post about Anish Kapoor's exhibition at the MCA for about a week since I went to see it. Incidentally, I did love it. From a structural point of view it is amazing, he really has an understanding of the minds of his audience, and how they interact with his work. The works I found most interesting are ones I couldn't photograph - the squares of fabric on (in?) the wall which make you doubt your own sense of 3D perception, and the solid concave structure hanging which seems to change shape as you move closer towards it and then retreat backwards. I'd love to be a gallery minder for this exhibition - it must be great watching visitors try to understand objects that trick their minds by moving their heads around in strange ways, and trying to touch physical objects that appear closer than they are.

....however, nothing beats his "Gangnam for Freedom":

[Video: Anish Kapoor]

(I confess I am a little bit obsessed with Gangnam style - especially how it's been used for advertising like this).

Anyway, although I loved the current exhibition, I always have more to say when I can think about a work conceptually rather than structurally. Last month on twitter, one of my friends retweeted a post which said, "Someone should commission Anish Kapoor to design a giant funhouse for kids". It was a little like that!

I have some of my photos from the exhibition on Instagram (louisekateanderson):

Is it there, or isn't it? #anishkapoor #mca

 I always wondered what my legs looked 

like from this angle #anishkapoor #mca 

Sky Mirror #anishkapoor #mca

[3 images are mine]

"Recorders" by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

In the Situational City subject in 2010, Lucas gave his lecture on the topic Relational Aesthetics, which I later wrote this essay on. The basic explanation for Relational Aesthetics, is art or design that incorporates its audience into its outcome. One of the artists I used for that essay Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has a current exhibition at the MCA called "Recorders", which is audience-inclusive art in a nutshell. I really liked the exhibition so I thought I'd put up some of my photos and explain some of the artworks.

This particular artwork involves the audience pressing their finger into a slot and waiting while the machine records your heartbeat. The image of your fingerprint then comes up and pulses to the beat of your heart. Each image moves along when a new person submits their fingerprint and the room displays some several thousand fingerprints of the most recent participants. (mine's the one with the purple heart).

Interestingly everyone has a unique fingerprint, yet when lined up next to each other, how similar they all seem.

This work involves a room filled with low level lights allowing visitors to create shadows large and small. Behind the shadows actual pictures of the audience are taken and displayed behind the shadows at random.

 This work involves typing a short question onto a keyboard which then gets sent to a number of little screens displaying jumbled up sentences which are odd but sometimes slightly insightful.

This artwork is merely a room filled with self-retracting tape measures mechanised to rise into the air as you walk past. They eventually fall over and are pulled back into the coil, only to start all over again.

This work records your voice at one ends and replays what you recorded, lighting itself up along the way and jumbling your voice with those of previous participants. 

 This work is a room filled with microphones of various heights. When you speak into a microphone, your message is recorded and played back to you as well as the message of a previous participant. Some of the ones I got were children singing, someone telling me to feel beautiful today, some guy beatboxing and another advertising their website. According to the MCA worker minding this work, there have been a few upset participants who heard something offfensive or rude.

 This work was also based on the pulse of the participants. It required you to hold your hands around two bars which measured your heartbeat and then a lightbulb above you began flickering at this rhythm. The room was filled with about a hundred lightbulbs all with their own rhythm.

Finally this work is a conveyor belt requesting the audience to "Empty their Pockets". The objects placed on the belt move through a scanner, and then once picked up the images remain projected among other scanned objects from previous participants.

Overall, I really liked the interactivity of the exhibition - it was almost like something out of the Powerhouse museum, and even a person without specific art appreciation could enjoy the technology.


*All images are mine of the Recorders exhibition at the MCA.