Theme Exploration - Points of Intersection
“Creativity is the secret sauce to science, technology, engineering, and math.”
Installations by Craig Colorusso, Alba Triana, Jamey Grimes, Masud Olufani, and Amy Gross intersect STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) objectives in direct ways. Jenny Fine, Andrew Scott Ross, Herb Parker and Michaela Pilar Brown are multidisciplinary artists whose installations explore memory, performance, land-marking, and other themes incorporating digital photography, museology, ethnography, and genealogy.
Outdoor interactive sculptures offer an alternative experience of time and space by capturing natural light and generating musical sound . In Craig Colorusso’s Sun Boxes Mach II (2014), each chamber in the installation is a speaker powered by the sun to operate independently with a different loop set to play a variety of guitar notes which collectively make a Bp chord. The length of the loops vary, causing them to overlap and slowly evolve over time. The boxes change the visual and physical landscape of its site. The audio technology transforms the entire environment using solar energy to produce sound.
While natural energy is the power source for Colorusso, mechanical energy is vital to the work of Alba Triana. Triana generates sound in cross-disciplinary installations examining its interrelated principles with vision and space in the physical universe. Microcosmos (2016-2018) investigates how everything in our physical world is constantly vibrating, even objects that appear to be still. By title, Microcosmos suggests there are certain realities so miniscule, they are invisible to the naked eye and observed only by aids such as telescopic instruments. Microcosmos is a vibrational installation whereby mechanical energy stimulates a cymbal which triggers movement in the characteristic patterns in which it vibrates (its intrinsic resonance mode) that generate visible and audible evidence of its hidden microcosm of vibration. A reflection of the cymbal’s motion is contained in a circle of projected amber light against a flat surface which adds a spatial property to the piece.
music on a bound string, no. 2 (2015), is the second in a series of sound installations manipulated to produce musical string compositions. In this work, a beam of transforming color is projected on a vibrating string resulting in the sound waves converting it into a series of colored lights. A speaker releases an audio signal that, while inaudible to the human ear, ignites the string to create a continuous transforming sound wave. In both works, Triana demonstrates how the natural core of inaudible and sonic visualizations can be manipulated to produce musical compositions.
The design and construction of immersive structures engineered by Jamey Grimes emulate forces in nature that invoke a range of mental and physical sensations. Shift (2023) simulates a natural environment composed of numerous thin, steel wires suspended from an upper platform to resemble rain with a video projection of the wires in motion intensifying the sensation of rainfall. Shadows resulting from the projected movement create the appearance of motion even when the wires are still. The piece is activated when walked through, causing the wires to move and make sounds as they brush against one another. The implied and actual motion, its scale, and the video effects serve as reminders of our relationship with natural phenomena.
Fabricating botanical forms and placing them in staged settings to imitate objects in the natural world is important to the work of Amy Gross. These unnatural replicas in fictitious habitats (in real space) mirror the optical dichotomy of the seen and unseen depending on light, size, time and perspective. Kin, Rosea Rosidoe, Iridis Nimis, Terraquo Caeli, and Insula Islets are from Gross’ 2021 installation series of stereoscopic viewers, light boxes, and stereoscopic photographs. The multimedia sculptures are made of synthetic yarns, embroidered and beaded fiber, wire, paper and fabric merged with stereoscopic 3-D vision technology. Using this technique, two-dimensional images appear three-dimensional to the human eye. Viewing two similar images with slightly different perspectives creates the illusion of a single image with depth.
Rhythm, memory and cultural history resonate in installations by actor and multimedia artist Masud Olufani. The Rhythm Section (2022) captures the recurrent tempo, sound and nuances of a pestle and mortar grounding grains, an ancient practice among women vital to sustaining many African communities. Mechanical motors activate three unmanned poles painted in color patterns of the continent, and serve as reminders of the physical demand on African women. The syncopation, repetition and pounding evoke memories of drumming and stomping feet in African American churches with no musical instruments to accompany congregational singing. As such, the sound speaks evolutionally to spirituals, blues, R&B, jazz and hip hop, all rooted in a relationship with drumming.
Interest in photography, performance, staging and storytelling drive the installations of Jenny Fine, shaped by memory, southern landscapes, and narratives. Camera views and the boundaries between fantasy and reality are important elements, along with repetition and reinvention as tools for emphasizing the complexities of time and space as central determinants of reality. Sync/swim (2023) is a reenacted installation on synchronized swimming, emphasizes the importance of teamwork, communication and timing to achieve the successful routine, otherwise you sink (lose). It speaks to choosing between conforming or going on one’s own. Fine intends to draw viewers into the fantasy experience physically, emotionally, and psychologically, thus, the narrative is make-believe, but the encounter was not.
Andrew Scott Ross scrutinizes the quixotical attempts of “encyclopedic museums” to reflect all cultural production. Since 2011, his Century Zoo series has presented alternative exhibitions endeavoring to be more comprehensive and reflective of mass culture by being in a state of perpetual transformation, constantly recontextualizing object relationships, continually evolving narratives, disrupting taxonomies, and discarding the high and low hierarchy. Century Zoo X (2023) imagined and fabricated in two countries, continues his use of drawings, sculpture, immersive environments, and videos to deconstruct standard museum practices. He shifts the arrangement of objects, adds and removes elements and reformats the structure with each re-installation. As such, it is possible to “begin to see cultural production more in mass and less in parts. “Each time Century Zoo gets reinstalled, more corruption takes place, emphasizing how interpretation and analysis of cultural artifacts create a misrepresentation of the subject. These new 'corrupted' objects inadvertently reveal the motivations and fantasies of the artist and their cultural environment."
Nature based sculptor Herb Parker’s assemblage-inspired installation, Southern Gothic (2023), is an amalgamation of edgy, surreal and evocative objects that invite associations with cultural, historical, political, religious and contemporary voices. He co-mingles hand-crafted sculptures and manipulated found objects that assume new life in the redefined roles Parker designates for them. The installation has corporate characteristics of a gathering of ethnographic specimen despite the unusualness of most objects. The immersive manner in which Parker observes and attends to culture and the daily life of people in the region are subjected to his insightful explorations. The descriptive nature of his investigations and findings which he calls Southern Gothic adds credence to the logic of such an association. This is underscored by the range of emotions, beliefs, attitudes, fears, and behaviors discernible across the visual landscape he exposes.
Southern Gothic, like Ross’ Century Zoo series, is ever-changing, questioning categorizations that distinguish man-made, handmade, manufactured, and machine or technology-derived (i.e., 3-D or A.I.) objects, particularly when redefined as part of a whole rather than the whole itself.
Botanically speaking, a tree is a perennial with a trunk supporting photosynthetic leaves or branches above the ground. In Michaela Pilar Brown’s installations, a tree is signage, a marker, a pedestal hoisting a symbolic vernacular home above the ground as if in a place of safety and reverence. Architecturally speaking, a vernacular home is a simple dwelling made of inexpensive materials with a straightforward utilitarian design. For Brown, a vernacular home is a historic landmark, a memorial, an archive of oral histories and personal narratives. Weeping (2023), incorporates these elements in a vignette about her family’s ownership of land in Winnsboro, South Carolina since the 1780s. A stripped, inverted tree from this location emulates a weeping willow, with houses made of black tarp resting on its lower branches with other houses arranged on the ground underneath. Select houses contain sound devices that, when activated by human movement, speak historically about life on the land. These walls talk, and the willow tree, symbolizing immortality and rebirth, reiterates the endurance of love and family despite death.
Diversified by the means through which they rely on interactive STEAM areas, or by the individual approaches taken to voice their points of view through multidisciplinary means, these artists are unified in the degree to which their installations encourage audience engagement and exhibit innovative ways whereby art intersects with other fields of study.
Feature photo shows Iridis Nimis by Amy Gross.