Sculpture Studio Spring 2010

Project 2: Kinetics and Interactivity

I Can't Breathe When You Sleep

 

 

 

I Can't Breathe When You Sleep, hand-written business carsd and flyers, 2012

 

To me this whole second project was about trying to reach out to the viewer. Of course the idea of “interactivity” could be defined in a multitude of ways – and many of my classmates brought different ideas and functions to their works in terms of interactivity. However, I saw many of these other works as being a case where the viewer comes to the work and then interacts in some manner with it and I wanted my work to be the opposite of this. So starting from the beginning phases of this project I was really struck by the artists that brought something physically or emotionally to the viewer – Acconci and his personal confessions or Gonzalez-Torres and his candy pieces and photocopies – the act of giving/ handing an object of some kind to the viewer was, in my mind, the perfect way to address the issue of interactivity.
     To me, a work could be interactive in theory, but not interactive because a viewer is not aware that they can take part in it or not aware of the work at all. So I thought the best way to have my piece be interactive was to personally “confront” the viewer myself, and the “piece” is our interaction and their thoughts and ideas that stem from this meeting and from the physical piece that they take with them. In order to take on this viewer-myself interaction I developed my project to have two parts or phases that would be occurring simultaneously. Part one would be the handing out of individual, hand-written business cards that contain the sentence, “I can’t breathe when you sleep” and part two was the hanging of hand-written, photocopied flyers around campus that had the same statement as the cards.

     I saw the cards as the primary mode for this creation of an artist-viewer dialogue, as I would have to be in the immediate proximity of the “viewer” to hand them a card and either ask them to read it and tell me what they think, or just hand them a card and walk away. Either way, the seed had been planted for an immediate or later conversation on the nature of my statement and what its purpose was. On the other hand, I saw the flyers as being more like back-up singers to the star that was the business cards. The flyers were multifaceted: they provided a form of reinforcement to the statement on the cards, people who got a card would be walk through a building or on a path and would see my message in a variety of unexpected places – thereby by restarting or continuing their thoughts about the sentence. The flyers also spread the project to just about everybody else on campus, so people who did not get a card would still be witness to a slightly different type of interaction with myself. Also, the flyers enabled anyone to take them and put them in new places, and often times I saw my flyers in locations – professor’s offices, dorm room doors – which I had not thought to place them.

The fact that my project was interacting with viewers on two fronts (the direct/personal business cards and the passive, yet still interactive flyers) I think really added to the amount of attention the project received. People were talking about the work on Facebook and in an array of classes where people had seen the flyers or heard about the project. The amount of discussion that was going really had a useful impact on my side, as when I would had someone a card, after they read it many would become excited, saying that they had seen my flyers and talked about it with friends and would want to know what the project was about – then the dialogue would begin as to the nature of the statement.
     Over the course of this project the talks I had with participants/viewers about the words, “I can’t breathe when you sleep” really varied. However, the thoughts about the words generally fell into two main categories: 1) The reader thought the words were about two people in a relationship and how much they loved each other or how much they needed one another or 2) The reader was made uncomfortable by the words, attributing them to a stalker-like person. It is interesting to think about these reactions in retrospect because in the beginning of this project I really saw these words as a manifestation of my own need for interaction and response from other people; I like to be seen by others and I wanted to tell people that I need them in my life. I saw the physical objects as representing this need and the physical interaction/discussion as doing the same. However, I have now seen that as soon as this thought is put out to the public, everyone brings his or her own thoughts and interpretations to the idea. No matter how uncomfortable this was for myself – I really was not sure at first if I wanted people moving my flyers or thinking I was a stalker – it added to the sense of interaction with the work; there was no set right or wrong answer and anything that did happen was only part of this expanding conversation. I think that this aspect was important for the viewer, many times people would ask me what the message was about as I walked away and I could only say, “What does it make you feel?”, I tried to let people know that they could do nothing wrong.

 

     The main thing that I feel was successful about this project was how I was able to spread the idea through the use of the flyers. I had originally wanted to put the flyers on people’s cars, but when this could not happen I decided to put them throughout campus (the campus center, dorms, academic buildings, etc). I think this change of plans was a real benefit as it allowed the project to spread to much more visible and noticeable spots on campus; basically, if more people saw the flyers then more people would talk about them, and that is exactly what happened. I feel that the cards were also successful, but to a different degree. Obviously, the personal interaction was what I wanted throughout the whole project and that aspect I think was a great success – a personal, unique conversation with whoever was receiving a card. However, i feel that as I was giving out the cards and people began to know that I was behind the project, the work began to lose some of its power that was in its mysteriousness and anonymity. Near the end I would give some people cards and they would already know what was happening and I feel that because I had become attached to the project, it lost some of the potential for dialogue.

This brings me to the main critiquing point of the project. I feel that because I had become know as the person behind the “I can’t breathe when you sleep” signs, the project could have benefitted from either having different messages handed out/posted – but still containing the “I” and “You” and still setting up a dialogue to happen – or doing this project in a new area, where I do not know anyone, and the conversation could unfold in a less biased manner. Perhaps this problem could have been amended by having multiple people pass out the cards, the message and conversation would still spread, but it would not be associated with just one person. However, the personal, one-to-one relationship was what I was really interested in going into this project, so I feel that had multiple accomplices been involved, the project would have seemed less personal, which is exactly what I wanted not to happen. Finally, as I move forward I plan to project this statement at night in the coming weeks, so it will be interesting to see if the statement being projected and myself being nearby creates anymore conversation – perhaps people who saw the cards and flyers but never talked to me about it will see the projection and feel that it is the right time to talk.