I See You...

What comes to mind when one thinks of surveillance? Is it security? Spying? The "third eye"? Among the pieces displayed in the ICA's Super Vision exhibit are about five that deal with this particular theme.

I chose to try to describe the message of surveillance in Mona Hatoum's piece, called "Corps Étranger" (French for foreign body). In it, she basically explores her guts with a little camera.

(Podcast to be posted next week--stay tuned!) As of Feb. 15, 2007, check!

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Here it is, my first podcast:

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Wooden Metal

Today, we went outside to look at the architecture of the ICA building. One of the major features to be noted is the architects' (Diller Scofidio + Renfro) use of glass throughout the entire building. You can see all that's taking place inside, while standing outside (in the freezing weather). By letting you know what's going on on the other side of the glass, the building appears to be more open to the public. And you don't feel shunned by it, as you would if you were approaching, say, a granite version of the building.

The use of wood in continuation from the boardwalk at the harbor also adds to the theme of "Welcome!," as it climbs up the stairs and merges with the glass and metal building, wrapping it with more wood on its floor, ceiling, and walls on both the inside and outside.

After examining ICA from the outside, we explored its innards with our handy digicams and tried to find something we'd never noticed before.

So, I present to you my video of elevator weights (sorry it's so dark):

Watch the Video

I was so excited when I thought I had found more wood from the boardwalk in such a sneaky little place. "Wow! The wood even has a part in how people/things go up and down the building." I was going to say how thorough that theme of public space mixed with private was carried out, by connecting the materials of wood and metal. But oh well.

Where Am I?

City Bird
Originally uploaded by cynth106.

That is the question. Today we focused on where we see ourselves, whether physical or mental or any other state we feel that we find ourselves in. We all went outside with digital cameras to take pictures of whatever that would illustrate the question.

This flamboyant, friendly-looking parrot was one of the few shots I took. Relating to our asking "Where am I?", I think it has a theme of misplacement. As one would expect to find a brightly colored, exotic bird in a more tropical environment, I think the dark cityscape background creates some pretty neat contrast.

In the galleries, one of the works of the day we observed/interpreted/related to/imitated/tried to understand/etc. was called Czech Modernism Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely, by Josiah McElheny (who had actually attended Brookline High; yay Boston pride!). This piece consists of eight glass objects, boxed inside four walls of mirrors, creating an effect of neverending rows of bottle/vase-like glass things.

You see reflections of the glass pieces that just go on forever in every direction. Then, you're not even sure if they're opaque or if you're looking through them. But there's not a single image in there that's of yourself, which is so crazy, since you're so used to looking into mirrors. The slightest evidence of your existence is your transparent reflection on the sheen of the outermost mirror (which is actually an interrogation mirror that creates the effect in the artwork). It made me feel like a ghost. It's spooky, in a way.

So basically, the answer to "Where am I?" in this piece, is: nowhere.

"New Light" Shed on a New Perspective

As you may have probably heard hundreds of thousands of times, the moral of the story is, "Don't judge a book by its cover" (well, in this case, replace "book" with "artwork"). The first piece we looked at in the galleries today was called "New Light" by James Turrell. Walking into a dark little passageway towards the exhibit, I was unsure of what to expect.

When we finally got to his piece, I was brought back to that feeling I had when I first saw Yoko Ono's Sky TV. Only this time, instead of my first impression of the piece being a simple blue screen, it seemed to me that the only major difference was that Turrell's screen is red. However, what's absolutely mindbending and visually confusing about "New Light" is that it's not even a screen. No projector, no television, nothing like that at all.

I really don't want to tell you what this piece of artwork truly is, because the moment I found out after having been kept in suspense, I was just so excited and astonished. It's totally worth it to see "New Light" for yourself without letting me ruin the big and, what it seems to be under further inspection, boundless surprise.

First Day at the ICA

Today we took a mini tour of the SUPER VISION exhibits, and one of things we checked out was this piece by Yoko Ono. At first glance, it just looks like a plain ol' blue screen on a pretty plasma television, but WAIT! First impressions are often wrong. It's actually showing the sky outside in real time, with a camera located on the side of the building actually pointing at the real sky.

I felt like I'd fallen for a trick.

So Yoko Ono came up with this piece, called Sky TV, in the 1960s and I just thought it was super nifty.

Yoko Ono