Q: What’s new media? A: Everything.
So here’s what’s from the Ryerson students’ new media show last Thursday, excuse my not-so-stellar photos… I haven’t mastered our camera in dim-lit spaces yet. Title of post is quoted from one of the student’s thankyou speech, catchy init?
For her final project, Carly Benkendorf, Ryerson’s new media graduate, went around Toronto asking for a penny from friends, families, and total strangers and attached their wish to it. Throughout last year, she collected enough pennies and wishes to cover a strip on a (roughly) 5 meter wall, scattered them on the floor, and then tell the audience to take a penny they like. And in the gallery full of video projections, flat screens, blinking lights, soundtracks and other reactive art works, the pennies were quite easily the most popular piece in the show. It’s poignant and intuitive. She also put the pile of ‘free’ pennies on the floor, making the audience crouching over and digging around, as if looking for gold. Reminds me a lot of Relational Aesthetics, which is something I haven’t thought about in a few years.
And speaking of that, I guess I also haven’t really been excited about seeing art since I left Europe (what’s that, ’06??), where contemporary art is at its prime. Because ever since then, everything in almost every galleries (of course, except for in New York City) that I step into more or less is a complete bore. Some are trying, some is borderline good, but most of them… meh.
It’s why this particular student show was so refreshing. Besides the work themselves, the space was really nice. Last year, I was a guest critic at the same show, which was held in the corridors and classrooms at their school, so even though the work was great, the vibe just didn’t cut it. To quote one of the former student “it’s like having your prom at your high school gym.” So this year, the kids are more grown up and moved out to a fancy hotel ballroom art space.
Speaking of prom… Edward Keeble’s wearable project is supposed to bring you back to dancing a slow jam while playing Pong (that’s what the description said anyhow). I ended up yelling at this kid who got to be my partner, as we try to push each other’s shoulders down. No slow jam, but it was pretty fun:
As you can probably guest from the pictures, the LED lights are the screens which you play using the shoulders of your opponents as controllers for Pong. I had to wait around to play it, but it was worth it to try. Very well built and the shirts didn’t break after the first few times of usage by total strangers, which is usually a big hurdle for wearable tech projects.
Another fun one was a video puzzle by Svetlana Bogdanovich called “Three Squares”. Video images of three squares from around the world were chopped up into smaller squares. These small squares have corresponding physical blocks which you move around the board to control the position of the video. Yes, probably better with photos:
Of course, art shows aren’t complete with dramatically large installations:
“Of Plastic Circumstances” by Rose Broadbent and “The Sleeping Buffalo” by Stephanie Gautier
There was also one memorable immersive video installation piece that I didn’t get to take a photo. Alex Kim and Kenny Leoung set up a 4-way surround video to portray an experience of a high school kid being bullied. It was done well, and if that experience is anything close to being real… let’s just say I’m glad I wasn’t bullied.
I think it’s fair to say that most people left the show impressed with what they saw. Some might ask what these graduates would do after they’re done, what kind of *real* skills do they have, and what type of companies hire them, etc. They’re reasonably typical questions. But there’s no typical answer. For people whose interest lies in the intersection of creativity and technology, but being neither an engineer or a fine art painter, they’re already not very typical. I guess the answer would be that these graduates will get by in their non-typical ways. Cuz if there’s anybody who knows that, I’m one of them.
(The website for the show is here in an unblogfriendly flash format, so I can’t link the projects directly).
I don’t think a time traveling coin is a good idea. If someone saw the date was from the future, they would assume it was a counterfeit.
Alfred on 21 July 2009