Once I saw a sculpture by Anish Kapoor that kicked my ass. It was one of his typical optically illusive sculptures, the conical ones that like as if they might be hollow or might be filled depending on what part of the surface you're looking at. But in order to see the sculpture you first had to walk down a long hall and then turn sharply to walk down another long hall, at the end of which (and beyond a barrier) the sculpture was installed.
At the turn I said to my friend something like, "'TF with all these halls?" And then I heard a strong echo, and I said, Oh.
If you're ever in da 'Burgh check out the James Turrell pieces at the Mattress Factory. He uses light to create the illusion of solid objects. It can be pretty spooky, as though you're confronted with an object made out of a completely alien material.
If you do plan on going to the MF, leave extra time to get lost.
If you ever have a chance to do a Janet Cardiff audiowalk, do it. If there's ever a long line to a room with a sign that says Janet Cardiff/George Bures Miller, get in that line. Aural illusions are not to be missed!
The cone sculpture (like this, but larger) at the far end of the hall was creating the echo. The installation was so designed that, after walking down a long corridor, people would likely turn the corner, see the piece at the end of a long, barricaded corridor and mutter about the installation of the piece. I'm sure it didn't work for everyone, but I said something practically under my breath and it echoed back at me.
Is Janet Cardiff the women who did that thing in East London with the footsteps and the kind of film noir-ish interludes? That was fun.
The cone sculpture (like this, but larger) at the far end of the hall was creating the echo. The installation was so designed that, after walking down a long corridor, people would likely turn the corner, see the piece at the end of a long, barricaded corridor and mutter about the installation of the piece. I'm sure it didn't work for everyone, but I said something practically under my breath and it echoed back at me. Make more sense?
The Cardiff audio/videowalk that was in the Carnegie International before last was insanely entertaining. Like playing hide and seek again, and you got to go through the Staff Only part of the Carnegie Library! Not much illusion, though, except for a part where the screen you were watching showed a different floor than the one you were on.
7: That is so awesome. I love ideas like that, that hinge on predicted behavior. It's interactive in a way that is unsettling; it's like you are not totally in control.
I've only done one Cardiff audiowalk, the one here in DC. It was completely immersive: as she walked down the National Mall she recorded ambient sounds, of course, and because it's the National Mall, it corresponds pretty closely with what you experience any time there. So you're hearing the sound of feet crunching gravel as a jogger passed by Cardiff, but the jogger that you in fact see is farther away than the sound you're hearing. There's this jarring misalignment between the strollers, joggers, kids on a carousel you see and those you hear, and then Cardiff is cooing in your ear about a devastating nuclear attack on the capital as you're hearing these ghost sounds—very impressive effect.
I did the Cardiff walk that was at the Hirshhorn last fall, it was pretty damn awesome. I'd hear a bicycle go by through the headphones, or hear the carousel start up, but when I spun around to see, there wasn't anything. You eventually start blending what's happening in real-time with what you hear in the recording, there's this cool feeling of detachment from the present. One of the eeriest parts, I thought, was when you take a drink from a water fountain, and you hear the same thing on the recording, from months earlier. So yes, I definately second the endorsement.
There is a photographer that takes the illusion one step further. Georges Rousse takes old abandoned buildings and incorporates painted surfaces and 3-D surfaces into his illusions (along the lines of Gordon Matta Clark with more whimsy). It is really incredible stuff, however I havent really seen much of his work stateside.
On another note... GO MAVS!
This is so bourgeois of me, but I see those pictures and imagine the headache of living or working in an optical illusion. Wouldn't it get tiring, or do you think people just get used to it?
We took our 2 year old son to the mall yesteday, and when he saw Lichtenstein's House I and he hopped the fence and started running towards it saying "I want to see what's in that restaurant."
I was totally taken with the question of whether messing with perspective can fool younger kids, or if somehow infants see things differently. If I wasn't busy trying to tackle him before he touched the work of art, I'd have been really interested in seeing when he fifured out that the "restaurant" was a lot closer to 2d than 3d.
http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?108118+0+0
Nothing half that cool in the malls in Lubbock.
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