When is it OK to be dishonest? Where do you see boundaries in our school? What don’t people know about you from looking at you?
These are not typically questions or answers most people would feel comfortable expressing to strangers. However, these personal inquiries quickly became public conversation as a part of the recent AAA Voices installation project, which created an anonymous public voice to stimulate thought-provoking interaction.
University students Matthew Linn and Erik Hegre placed the interactive exhibit on the second floor corridor of Lawrence Hall to attract students’ attention and participation. The visually stunning installation of suspended light luminaries from a ceiling surrounded by a 15-foot high moire screen gives the illusion of peering through water. Students, faculty and staff engaged themselves by transforming moire patterns, reshaping twistable components, directing lights and customizing paper dolls. Participants were not only using innovative thinking, but also using art as a voice.
“Our goals initially existed within the Architecture and Allied Arts programs, but in staying with the idea of diversity, would like to extend outwards to others in the University community,” Linn said. “Through art we learned that as a University community we can communicate with one another effectively. Art need not to be something static, hanging on a wall. It can live and change as time passes.”
The exhibit also offered a digital graffiti wall, which was one way of anonymously voicing opinions, thoughts or questions. Using a keyboard interface, students walked up to click one of the questions and then answer it by using the keyboard. The answers were displayed in colorful flashes, switching from question to question, then showing all of the answers. Participants voiced personal questions by writing on cards that were later hung up on the walls inside of the exhibit. Their inquiries were then left on display to collect feedback from those who were interested.
“This served as an organized way for the administration, the staff and students to voice themselves in a setting that normally would be an inappropriate venue. This platform has been artificially inserted for another level of communication that was able to expose everyone in a positive way. The majority of comments were critical but positive, and everyone was saying what was on the tip of their tongues that had never really come out before,” Hegre said.
“It was nice to see people interact with each other, and a good way for people to say things they normally wouldn’t say face-to-face. We really wanted to get people talking and working together,” Linn said.
The exhibit offered aesthetics that were nearly impossible to pass by without stopping, and the central location promised good exposure. Hegre says they purposely chose this spot because it was a location that would attract attention. He also explained that the space they chose was once a transition space that had no meaning, but the exhibit made the space a destination.
“The exhibit offered a number of visual effects that left people in a state of inquiry. People wanted to stop and find out what was going on, and as soon as you stepped into the installation you instantly wanted to know more,” Hegre said.
The light luminaries built by Hegre and Linn functioned to not only attract the attention of those passing by, but they also offered a means of communication and expression. One of the luminary exhibits entailed three cylindrical horizontal lights made of individual tongs. The acrylic tongs were free to rotate to form frozen dynamic light patterns.
The other light exhibit offered a similar experience that featured three identical fixtures suspended from the ceiling all three feet in length. Each were composed of 300 corrugated disks that slid over florescent tubes. Participants could turn, spin, rotate or align the disks to form unique patterns of light. The idea behind the light fixtures was to interact with light in a new way that sparked curiosity and productive thinking.
“We are always interacting with our world and when we have questions and curiosity we do something about it. These light fixtures prompt the question, ‘what can you do with me?’ This is more about what the object is asking of you and how you can affect the light using your own ideas,” Hegre said.
Although the exhibit is no longer up in Lawrence Hall, the project is moving online to serve as a tool to enhance the campus community.
“The main idea of the exhibit was not only to explore the diversity that exists within the school, but to reach out to the different disciplines and convince them to work more closely with one another,” Linn said. “There are so many diverse pieces that make up the University of Oregon, but they all live within the confines of their discipline. We as academics should work more closely with people from different areas of expertise in an effort to obtain a more layered, more variegated understanding of the world.”
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Daily Emerald
June 6, 2009
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