Sculpture Studio Spring 2012

Project 2: Kinetics and Interactivity

            The meaning behind an interactive sculpture is achieved through the dialogue between the audience and the piece. In this case, the artwork is a physical objects which I have created, and which the audience is invited to engage with.
            When I began this piece, I set out to embrace the interactive. I wanted the audience to initiate the piece. I wanted the audience to walk up to the sculpture and become engaged enough to want to interact with the piece. I relied on the choice of the audience to “activate” the piece.            
            The last piece I worked on became very body-like and was full of many interesting and ambiguous forms, which I associate with the human body. The color itself is very flesh-like and the bulbous forms are reminiscent of the body, the idea of flesh and whatever is inside. The inside is what got me started with this piece. I wanted a piece that explored the body, both inside and out.
            The inside of the body is not something we think of when we look at the body. This is most likely because we do not see the inside of the body, and when we do, it is not often in a calm or regular setting. Our bodies are sealed off, and meant to stay sealed off. When we see the insides of our bodies, it is usually cause for alarm. We live our lives protecting our bodies, and protecting what is inside them. Never do we open our bodies up out of curiosity. 
            What if we opened our bodies? What sort of message does that send? I love the idea of the taboo, especially with the body. I feel that the body is something which society has many standards about, and there are easily defined “rights and wrongs” to how society views actions towards the body. I wanted the viewer to want to cross that line- out of curiosity.

            I went about achieving this by creating a torso piece, which emulates the body. I didn’t want the actual piece to be identical to a human body, but I wanted to achieve a very visceral and real experience with synthetic materials. I want the experience to feel like a body, and I relied on touch to evoke such feelings. The look to me was important that it remind people of flesh, but not necessarily a realistic or accurate flesh.
I wanted the piece to be creepy. I think I achieved this with the materials that I used. I used latex and rubber cement to create a flesh like texture. For the inside, once again I used stuffing, but this time, doused in rubber cement and more latex, with pigment to suggest the inside of a body. I wanted the chest cavity to open, reminiscent of an autopsy, and to invite the viewer to examine on a closer level. I sewed up the chest cavity in a crude manner, with twine soaked in rubber cement. While I did sew the edges together, I left them open, and if the viewer was presented with this torso, I intended them to unravel and open the chest cavity.
At first, when I began this project, I wanted the piece to immediately capture the viewer’s attention and draw them in. I accompanied the piece with the following text:

                                                            Must we Open what we close?

            I put the focus on what the viewer would find on the inside, which would be the following text, written on a rolled up paper:
           

                                                                                    This is me.

            As I continued with the piece, I enjoyed the texture of the outside and felt that even if the viewer did not open up the piece, that this was okay. I want the audience to activate the piece, but if they do not, it is still a reaction. Many people when presented with this piece are so focused on the texture and feeling that they do not want to actually open in. I liked the edges of the part I sewed with petroleum jelly to add to the sensation. If people chose not to open it, I still evoked some sort of reaction about the body, and people chose not to because of their own opinions about the body.
            If someone wishes to open my piece then they will perhaps understand more about the piece. On the inside, the text says, “this is me” which is a reference to the fact that the plaster cast of the chest is a cast of my own torso. I began this piece by wrapping my body in plaster to create a body that was born from my own. This makes the piece more personal, and adds the artist (me) to the dialogue between the audience and the piece.
I want the viewer to consider me in this piece, and to wonder what I mean by “this is me.” Is it a general statement that we are all the same inside? Is this literally my body? Is this how I feel about my body? I feel this piece is a window into my inner self- literally. There is a certain vulnerability that I display by having the option of literally opening myself up. I want the viewer to take the text and try ad connect it to the physical object, and in turn, connect it to me. I want them to wonder, and I want them to consider their own body once they know that this body is a part of an actual person.