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Thursday, February 17, 2022
An Immersive Art Installation Designed to Be Experienced With Closed Eyes Will Debut in a Rebranded 'Festival of Brexit' in the U.K.
Artnet News: An ambitious immersive artwork designed “to be experienced with your eyes closed” will begin touring around the U.K. in May as part of the rebrand of a pricey initiative originally planned to celebrate U.K. culture in the wake of Brexit.
I am still a bit annoyed with Brexit due to the fact that I lost my European Union citizenship from it, so I was really pessimistic about this article. The idea of a festival to celebrate “British culture” is also offputting because of Britain's tendency to take the cultures of colonized nations and pass it off as their own. Regardless of the reasoning behind the piece, I think it’s a really cool traveling experience. The creator originally wanted to “replace television” by creating an experience that made the viewer create a cinematic experience akin to television in their minds. This was attempted by letting passive people close their eyes and be exposed to images generated by flickering light. Over six decades later, a team of scientists has furthered this idea by incorporating sound, lighting, neuroscience, and architecture to create enhance the original experience. I’m still a little bit confused as to why this is “British culture” but honestly, it's still pretty cool.
I enjoy the physical idea and interaction of the art piece. Experiencing art with one's eyes closed is an interesting and new take on 'seeing' and viewing art. However, what is 'British culture'? Not only has England historically been an exploitative, colonial nation, but 'British culture' homogenised the numerous cultures that now reside in the UK, in addition to homogenising the UK itself. Brexit was by no means a 'positive thing', causing numerous societal and economic repercussions in addition to fueling misplaced nationalism and conflict between the individual countries of the UK. The artist, Brion Gysin, originally made this piece as a way to invent their own immersive experiences, commentating on the passive consumption of mass-produced media–this does not line up with British pride and 'Festival of Brexit', the original name of the group of commissioned projects. Quite honestly, while this is a visually cool piece, the intention behind the piece just confuses me.
I am very interested in Immersive Art installations that reexamine the relationship of the art with the viewer which is something that this new British installation hopes to achieve by designing an art piece that is meant to be experienced with One’s eyes closed. When reading about this new touring art installation, I though how interesting it was to design without one of our senses in mind to see our other senses are then heightened in the experience. The art installation is touring around the U.K to celebrate UK culture in wake of Brexit, which is hilarious coming from an imperial colonizer who stole and erased the cultures of many for so long but now wants to retreat from the global stage. What was on my mind is how similar the experience of this piece of art will be for the blind and the sighted and how unique it is to craft an experience that is meant to be consumed by those our society considers “disabled”. I wonder what the very famous british street artist Banksy would think of this touring exhibition on British "culture"
This is a super cool idea for an installation, and now I’m wondering what it must be like to experience. It's fascinating that the true experience of walking into this exhibit is legitimately impossible to photograph as it happens on the backs of the viewer’s eyelids. That is a technical problem. Further into the interpretive realm, the experience is completely different to every observer based on the way that they stand, facing the flickering lights head on or from an angle, and of course how the mind interprets the light. It is something that must be physically attended to experience, however at the same time the exhibit could be extremely mobile if released as a video one could play on a laptop with your eyes closed and the brightness turned all the way up. I’m not sure what this installation has to do with Brexit, but then again, I haven’t seen it and I wasn’t there for Brexit, so what do I know?
This is a bananas art exhibit. The implications of art that takes place within the human psyche and depends on collective consciousness is fascinating enough, but the star studded team behind the project only furthers my interest. Experimental art like this is exciting, but also terrifying. The fact that there are people in the world who understand the human consciousness so deeply that they can manufacture hallucinations through sound is a horrible dystopian nightmare, especially when Theresa May is helping hundreds of thousands of people experience it for free. However, if it works, it has profound effects on what we consider art, and how visual effects an be communicated to people without full sight. This is either one of the coolest art projects ever made, or a horrifying plot to brainwash the arts interested citizenry of the U.K. Or both! Probably both. Either way, I’m eager to see what new developments are made.
What I got from reading this article was not at all what I expected, I assumed that this was going to be a piece about an artwork that engaged us not visually, but through sound or touch or other mediums, something I would like to get the chance to do in some works that I do because I find some of those much more intimate and harder to separate yourself from the story or the environment when you are a member of the audience, especially because in discussions with people I know I’ve talked with them about how we interact with the world, and out of us that use visual stimuli we all rely on different senses in different ways and to different extents as back-ups to that in our day to day lives. As for the actual piece in the article, I’m curious, but assuming, that they did test this beforehand and very curious on how this works,what it actually produces in the heads of people, is it consistent or very unique?
6 comments:
I am still a bit annoyed with Brexit due to the fact that I lost my European Union citizenship from it, so I was really pessimistic about this article. The idea of a festival to celebrate “British culture” is also offputting because of Britain's tendency to take the cultures of colonized nations and pass it off as their own. Regardless of the reasoning behind the piece, I think it’s a really cool traveling experience. The creator originally wanted to “replace television” by creating an experience that made the viewer create a cinematic experience akin to television in their minds. This was attempted by letting passive people close their eyes and be exposed to images generated by flickering light. Over six decades later, a team of scientists has furthered this idea by incorporating sound, lighting, neuroscience, and architecture to create enhance the original experience. I’m still a little bit confused as to why this is “British culture” but honestly, it's still pretty cool.
I enjoy the physical idea and interaction of the art piece. Experiencing art with one's eyes closed is an interesting and new take on 'seeing' and viewing art. However, what is 'British culture'? Not only has England historically been an exploitative, colonial nation, but 'British culture' homogenised the numerous cultures that now reside in the UK, in addition to homogenising the UK itself. Brexit was by no means a 'positive thing', causing numerous societal and economic repercussions in addition to fueling misplaced nationalism and conflict between the individual countries of the UK. The artist, Brion Gysin, originally made this piece as a way to invent their own immersive experiences, commentating on the passive consumption of mass-produced media–this does not line up with British pride and 'Festival of Brexit', the original name of the group of commissioned projects. Quite honestly, while this is a visually cool piece, the intention behind the piece just confuses me.
I am very interested in Immersive Art installations that reexamine the relationship of the art with the viewer which is something that this new British installation hopes to achieve by designing an art piece that is meant to be experienced with One’s eyes closed. When reading about this new touring art installation, I though how interesting it was to design without one of our senses in mind to see our other senses are then heightened in the experience. The art installation is touring around the U.K to celebrate UK culture in wake of Brexit, which is hilarious coming from an imperial colonizer who stole and erased the cultures of many for so long but now wants to retreat from the global stage. What was on my mind is how similar the experience of this piece of art will be for the blind and the sighted and how unique it is to craft an experience that is meant to be consumed by those our society considers “disabled”. I wonder what the very famous british street artist Banksy would think of this touring exhibition on British "culture"
This is a super cool idea for an installation, and now I’m wondering what it must be like to experience. It's fascinating that the true experience of walking into this exhibit is legitimately impossible to photograph as it happens on the backs of the viewer’s eyelids. That is a technical problem. Further into the interpretive realm, the experience is completely different to every observer based on the way that they stand, facing the flickering lights head on or from an angle, and of course how the mind interprets the light. It is something that must be physically attended to experience, however at the same time the exhibit could be extremely mobile if released as a video one could play on a laptop with your eyes closed and the brightness turned all the way up. I’m not sure what this installation has to do with Brexit, but then again, I haven’t seen it and I wasn’t there for Brexit, so what do I know?
This is a bananas art exhibit. The implications of art that takes place within the human psyche and depends on collective consciousness is fascinating enough, but the star studded team behind the project only furthers my interest. Experimental art like this is exciting, but also terrifying. The fact that there are people in the world who understand the human consciousness so deeply that they can manufacture hallucinations through sound is a horrible dystopian nightmare, especially when Theresa May is helping hundreds of thousands of people experience it for free. However, if it works, it has profound effects on what we consider art, and how visual effects an be communicated to people without full sight. This is either one of the coolest art projects ever made, or a horrifying plot to brainwash the arts interested citizenry of the U.K. Or both! Probably both. Either way, I’m eager to see what new developments are made.
What I got from reading this article was not at all what I expected, I assumed that this was going to be a piece about an artwork that engaged us not visually, but through sound or touch or other mediums, something I would like to get the chance to do in some works that I do because I find some of those much more intimate and harder to separate yourself from the story or the environment when you are a member of the audience, especially because in discussions with people I know I’ve talked with them about how we interact with the world, and out of us that use visual stimuli we all rely on different senses in different ways and to different extents as back-ups to that in our day to day lives. As for the actual piece in the article, I’m curious, but assuming, that they did test this beforehand and very curious on how this works,what it actually produces in the heads of people, is it consistent or very unique?
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