Daily Bruin:

New media art gives creative spin to impersonal technology

Exhibit:
Wight Gallery display bring avant-garde sensibilities to digital from Finland.
Digital Art often seems as cold and sterile as the technology that produced it. Not so with F2F: New Media Art from Finland, the new art exhibition in Wight Gallery.

The show strives to put a human face on intimidating technology. Finland has long been a pioneer in both the digital and wireless communications fields and a home to avant-garde art. F2F bridges the two divergent fields through a wide mix of interactive art projects.

Aided by the soothing yet strangely unsettling call of seagulls from some unseen exhibit, F2F transforms the Wight Gallery into an eerie netherworld of white planes and dark corners. Soft music and moody sound effects further heighten the experience.

Some of the art is fun and playful, like Juha Huuskonen´s "Mirror ++." A favorite with children, the work acts as a blue-tinted kaleidoscope that captures the viewer´s image and projects it, swirling and repeating, onto a nearby wall.

Other works touch a deep chord within the human psyche.

Heidi Tikka´s "Mother, Child," for example, simulates the experience of cradling a new-born baby. It invites the viewer to sit on a chair and drape a white towel across themselves, as an overhead projector casts an image of baby on his lap. The baby, and image of Tikka´s real-life daughter, smiles and gurgles in response to the movements of the person " holding" her.

Heidi Tikka´s "Mother, Child" shows technology´s capacity to inspire compassion, other works warn of how impersonal technology can drain compassion from a society. Spectators watch, unmoved, as animated figures meet their doom in "Hit2morrow."

"Hit2morrow" mocks the human tendency toward fatalism with a prognostication archery game. Patrons take turns firing a foam-tipped bow and arrow at a virtual target. A direct hit on the bull's eye reveals a short computer animated prediction about the future.

"Tomorrow," one enigmatic forecast warns, "everyone will drown." A hapless group of pastelcolored people, bearing an eerie resemblance to the giant stone heads of Easter Island fame, dance in the field before a Kremlin-like building. Before the viewer´s eyes, the water level starst to rise, slowly but surely consuming the islanders, who continue their relentless capering until the bitter end.

"Hit2morrow´s" predictions are not always so dire, ranging from the strange to the absurd to the disturbing. When the piece claims that "tomorrow the chosen one will arrive," it is accompanied by a film of the same animated islanders on the run from tanks.

At the last second, a giant floating cross rips across the screen, drops bombs on the pursuing tanks, the blasts off into space. "Tomorrow we will be many" features the same islanders, lined up in rows, slowly multiplying, while eerie techno music plays.

Technology can be used to fill human needs, but often its excesses encourage people to label their "wants" as "needs."

"Need," Tuomo Tammenpää´s wry comment on consumer culture, caused a stir when it first premiered in Los Angeles. Before the opening, Tammenpää posted signs and distributed leaflets at restaurants and coffee shops around town, advertising an imaginary product called "Need."

Altough the concept first mystified some patrons, Tammenpää´s intentions became clear when customers actually began to calling in to order "Need." Altough they had no idea what the product was, they were convinced that they desperately needed to posses it.

The sculpture itself consists of a small sterilewhite alcove, lit by almost blinding white lights. Neatly arranged stacks of CDs, boxes, bottles, pill packs, solution vials and aluminum cans, each bearing the "need" logo, line the surrounding glass shelves, Not surprisingly, each box is empty and every CD is blank: The mysterious "Need" that everyone needs is nowhere to be found.

A computer terminal additionally allows viewers to visit the "Need" Web site, become members, and "order" nonexistent "Need" merchandise.

The Internet is also an integral part of "IceBorg," a virtual world that builds on the same technology as do Internet chat rooms, allowing viewers to use an animated avatar to explore a virtual world. Andy Best´s simulated planet represents a deserted minig asteroid, over-exploitet and plaguet by pollution.

Apparently, many years ago, a space trasport crashed, stranding its helpless crew on the desolate rock. While awaiting rescue, the survivors have built a new civilization.

The audience can explore the intricacies of the asteroid society through their character, a leg-less blue humanoid wearing a space suit that strolls leisurely across landscapes of burning lava and frigid ice on his unuasully long arms. The wandering creature can stride through an ocean of molten rock just as easily ashe can float above it and his calm fluid movements draw viewer into his faux reality.

Altough it uses real actors, Teijo Pellinen´s "Aquarium" creates a world no less "virtual." The piece is based on a popular interactive Finnish television series of the same name.

Set up to resemble a living room. The viewers sits in a plush arm chair to watch television show about a bored Finnish couple. A convenient telephone allows the viewer to direct the actions of the characters using a choose-your-own-adventure format by pressing different buttons to perform various actions.

With such wildly original ideas, the only limits on the show are not imposed by lack of imagination, but by the inherent difficulties of dealing with new technology.

Unfortunately, not every piece of art goes off snag-free and a couple pieces are still under construction. Even so, the projects look promising and minor technical difficulties should not deter people from exploring this unique show.

The somber mood of the gallery gives the exhibition an unsettling otherworldly quality. While this might not exactly meet the show´s goal of mollifying technophobes, the atmosphere does suit an exhibition that showcases both the yin and yang of new technology. With the artists´astute observations of human nature, F2F makes for an exciting and thought-provoking experience.

ART:
F2F, New Media in Finnish Art is on display in the New Wight Gallery in Dickson Arts Center through October.

By Michael Rosen-Molina
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Friday, September 29, 2000