The world around us is constantly changing. It is really unique in its beauty. Every aspect of our reality can arouse certain emotions and feelings. The variety of our emotions and variants of their expression is great. Artists have a wonderful opportunity to express all their passions and feelings with the help of depicting and demonstrating them in different works of art.
Today the possibilities of artists and designers in illustrating of the peculiarities of their inner world and feelings are almost limitless. There are a lot of artists who choose extraordinary approaches to realize their original intentions and to draw the public’s attention to their works. Modern tendencies in the development of art result in wide using of media, visual, computer and interactive technologies for creating of the art masterpieces.
Jonathan Harris, Sep Kamvar, Miwa Matreyek, Toni Dove, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz work in various styles, and they use different technologies and varied approaches to creating of their unique installations. However, all of them are masters of expressing of their certain feelings and of appealing to the audience’s emotional reaction.
What aspect of our inner world can help us be unique personalities? It is our dreams. Toni Dove with the help of her Artificial Changelings created the world of illusions in which dreamers can experience themselves in the company of two interesting women and can learn their thoughts and dreams. Artificial Changelings project is “a romance thriller about shopping” which is presented in the form of the installation “in which one person at a time uses body movement to interact with sound and images” (“Artificial Changelings”).
The technological peculiarities of the installation are characterized by the fact that the author uses a projection screen and a room with four specific zones for producing of the effect of interacting with the characters of the film (“Artificial Changelings”). “As an audience member you step into a pool of light in front of the screen and enter the interactive zones” (“Artificial Changelings”). All these possibilities became available for the viewers after the author’s introducing of these two women.
Arathusa and Zilith live in different centuries, but they can be considered as similar in their characters and aspirations and even as one person embodied in different periods of time. Arathusa lives in Paris of the 19th century, and she is portrayed as “a kleptomaniac and an ecstatic dreamer who suffers the constraints of Victorian society” (“Artificial Changelings”). She also dreams about Zilith, a woman of the future.
Their worlds are full of romantic feelings and emotions, and they are passionate in their relations with men and relations with the things which can be stolen. Viewers of the ‘thriller’ became the participants of this highly affecting story when they move. “Within the zones movement causes changes in the behavior of video and sound” (“Artificial Changelings”).
Thus, viewers have the opportunity to interact with the images in their futuristic world and to identify their emotions and passions. “The characters become like marionettes with unpredictable reactions based on the movement of the viewer in front of the screen” (“Artificial Changelings”).
It is interesting that the main idea of Artificial Changelings is depicting of the phenomenon of “how consumer economy from the Industrial Revolution to the present” can influence the public’s minds (“Artificial Changelings”).
Artificial Changelings project gives a chance to act in the virtual interactive reality and to move “back and forth between two centuries as if they were parallel realities suspended in the universe where time has no linear direction” (“Artificial Changelings”). Artificial Changelings project is the part of the author’s imaginative trilogy in which the viewers can be easily involved.
The public’s reactions to the artists’ work and their responsiveness are necessary for the authors who develop their objects in order to get a certain response. They need to see and feel the audience’s reactions and emotions. Moreover, artists have the opportunity to unite viewers and to present them the chance to look inside the artwork and also to feel each other as co-authors who can successfully participate in its creating.
If Toni Dove offered the prospect to interact with the characters of her installation, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz allowed the viewers to create the installation with the help of their real communication, interaction and emotional interchange between those people who lived in Los Angeles and New York in 1980.
“Hole in Space is described by its creators as a Public Communication Sculpture” (“Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz”). Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz had the idea to organize spontaneous communication between people in Los Angeles and New York who could happen to take part in the project. They could see each other and to interact during three evenings for 2 hours. It was possible because of using of specific TV transmission technology.
The further results of the project were given in the form of a documentary film and presented on two large screens in which the participants of the process of communication in the project were shown. This installation was first exposed at The Long Beach Museum of Art in 1980 (“Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz”).
Thus, the possibilities of creating of this art object with using of media and TV transmission technologies can be considered as wider than those of any interactive technology. However, the results of this project do not give the opportunity to participate in it immediately, while examining it by the viewers.
Nevertheless, the concept of the installation can be described as the intention to depict the necessity of real communication between those people who can live in different nooks of the country. “It was important to the artists that the work was not announced through the art press; they wanted an unexpected audience of passers-by” (Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz).
The work by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz involved the audience in the process of creating it and then presented the results of the project in order to get the responses and reactions. Thus, it is possible to say that the audience’s emotions and feelings were drawn in the project twice. In contrast, Miwa Matreyek prefers to produce solo performances and installations with the help of which she can see the public’s reaction to her personal involvement into the presentation of the work.
Miwa Matreyek uses the interactive possibilities of multimedia technologies. Dream of Lucid Living is a unique installation which presents the definite features of a solo performance. “This piece is executed with computer generated images projected on a screen with the addition of Matreyek acting out scenes behind a screen that produces her shadow to be incorporated with the digital animations” (Jethoo).
Thus, Matreyek uses multimedia and computer technologies in order to reflect a special fantastical world in which images are connected with animations, and in which she incorporates herself physically (Jethoo).
Miwa Matreyek demonstrates her own vision of the reality combining it with peculiar shadow images and animation. However, the effect of poetic illusion is removed by Matreyek’s personal participating in the performance.
Thus, the installation also has the theatrical features. “It is remarkable how precise her body movements are with the images on screen; how each action made corresponds with the animations” (Jethoo). This show combines music, videos, animations and acting in the whole one which can exist and act as a inimitable world with the help of multimedia technologies and effects.
However, real feelings and emotions are presented with the help of the author’s acting. Moreover, the main peculiarity of this kind of installation is in the fact that Miwa Matreyek has the opportunity to observe the viewers’ reaction immediately. Thus, the contact of the author and the audience is direct, and this fact distinguishes this type of installations among the others which are based on the interactive communication or immediate communication between the author and his audience.
In We Feel Fine Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar offered their own vision of the possibility of the relations between the artist and his viewer. We Feel Fine is an extremely unique art project which involved a lot of people in its working out even without their awareness of the fact. Moreover, the results of the artwork concentrate on the people’s emotions, as we can see it from the name of the project, and it also appeals to the audience’s certain reaction.
We Feel Fine is an astonishing work which combines the possibilities of using of the Internet databases and their analyzing and the possibilities of the online project. Moreover, the results can be presented in the form of special illustrations, graphs and tables given in the printed book. Thus, We Feel Fine can be considered as a dynamic interactive project and as a great static artwork by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar (Sample).
In 2006 Jonathan Harris, a media artist, and Sep Kamvar, a computer scientist, worked out the program which could make the research in thousands of blogs and determine definite blog posts and then collect the sentences with such phrases as ‘I feel’ and ‘I am feeling’.
The results of the research of different kinds of expressions of people’s emotions were realized in the form of “the multifaceted interface that has six so-called “movements” – six ways of visualizing the data collected by We Feel Fine’s crawler” (Sample).
All the sentences were organized in colorful circles and squares depending on the character of the information which they contained. The site which was created by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar became the real sensation in the world of the modern art because of its creativity and artistic significance.
This great work was also presented in the book version in 2009. Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar examined real emotions of people which they expressed in a number of blogs every day, and which reflected the real situation in the society. These peculiarities of the inner world of the people were depicted in their own words.
That is why the audience had the opportunity to participate in creating of the project and to react to its everyday results. Thus, the method of visualization is presented in the project with the help of modern computer technologies. That is why the message of the work can be considered as depicting of people’s emotions which they feel every day and their further visual presenting.
Modern artists use quite unique techniques and different interactive and multimedia technologies to involve their audience in the imaginative world of their artworks. Their approaches are various, but their main intentions are to attract the public’s attention to their works to receive the emotional feedback.
Works Cited
“Artificial Changelings”. tonidove.com. n.d. Web.
Jethoo, Deevanie. “Miwa Matreyek: Dream of Lucid Living”. deevanie.files.wordpress.com. n.d. Web.
“Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz”. crumbweb.org. n.d. Web.
Sample, Mark. “The Poetics of Metadata and the Potential of Paradata”. samplereality.com. 22 March 2011. Web.