Interacting With Act React

I made a recent visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum to check out the current exhibition Act/React. It is a fantastic journey through some of the most interesting and engaging artists creating interactive art at this time.

Of all the artworks I was most intrigued by a piece called Healing Pool by the artist Brian Knep. Healing Pool consists of a large area of vinyl flooring upon which is projected a pattern of organic looking nodes. When this pattern is interupted by shadow in any way… if for instance a person walks on or lays upon the floor, the nodes disapear. As soon as the obstruction is removed, the surrounding nodes begin to grow inwards to fill up the space. The nodes will grow in until they touch, but will not grow together, creating a kind of scar.

The result is a piece that encourages a great deal of interaction, both between the individual and the artwork, and between the groups of people that are interacting with it.

While this social interaction could be interpreted as the main function of the piece, I was more intrigued by the mechanics of the work. The patterns nodes and their growth shows an order and logic that seems to be the function of written computer programing. The piece grows back in a way that is in a way simple and predictable. This can be used to create unique and beautiful patterns than promote contemplation much the way a zen rock garden would… ones own interaction had an effect on the asthetic appearance of the work.

But many people didn’t seem to be interested in the asthetic appearance of the piece much at all. A good many of the people I observed seemed much more interested in their ability to destroy than the eventual asthetic result that their destruction would generate. The piece becomes more about ones own interaction, magnifying our own importance in relation to the work.

This is, in a way fitting. One of the the things that make this exhibit so unique and enjoyable is it’s dependace upon us to complete the work. One could make the argument that this could be said of all art (and people have said just that) but I think it is safe to say that this statment rings truer here with these works than many other examples I can come up with.

It is human nature to be interested in ourselves and our effect on the world around us. And this interest is reflected in a most obvious way in Daniel Rozen’s piece Peg Mirror.

This piece is a fascinating artwork that uses many rotating pegs. This rotation is able to change the amount of shadow on each peg and thusly how much light each peg reflects. Using a camera in the center of the piece the image of the viewer is displayed with the pegs acting as giant pixels.

This increases ones importance to the work by imposing our own image upon it… It is harder to leave a more telling impression on a work than our own reflection.

Act/React showcases our own interaction with the art and the way integrating that interaction into the asthetics of the work informs the experience the individual has. Each work on display somehow incoperates everyones favorite subject… themselves.