CSC Henry Art GalleryTrip - 9/06/12

           For my Core Studio Concepts class at Cornish this year, our first Thursday trip was to the Henry Art Gallery on the UW's campus. It was a very intriguing visit and I think it was a great start to the class.
          The first place I went at the Henry was the James Turrell "Light Reign Skyspace Tower". It was so pleasant and enchanting to be able to sit in such a quiet and peaceful place amidst the bustle and noise of the city. It was basically a oval room with wood plank seating all around - very reminiscient of a cabin or of a sauna of sorts. All around you, in the back of the seating was a soft, warm luminous glow. Above you, an oval shape was cut out of the ceiling, containing in it a gentle blue light, fading into purple in the middle. There was silence all around, and the light just made you feel as if you were in the bottom of some enormously tall tower. It was a refreshing start to the rest of the sights before me.

Poster for "The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl". 2012. (Henry Art Gallery)



        Once I had had my fill of the skyspace, I ventured forth into the main museum building, where I first encountered :The Record : Contemporary Art and Vinyl". All of the pieces featured in this show collectively showed amazing spontaniety and creativity, in my opinion, of all the artists whose work was there. The first piece that really caught my eye was Sean Duffy's "Burnout Sun" which was an amazing use of half-records and whole records to create a dynamic piece. What I thought was interesting is that he kept all of the labels on each of the records. Instead of making the records just simply vinyl discs, he kept their identity by leaving the labels.

      Another piece that grabbed my attention was the working model of Laurie Anderson's "viophonograph". Laurie Anderson was an experimental performer back in 1977 when she created a unique variation of the violin she was trained to play. She removed the strings that her bow would normally strike with a small, battery operated phonograph. On that phonograph, she placed a custom made record with grooves corresponding to all the notes regularly played on a violin. When she placed her bow on the rotating vinyl, it emitted a sound not unlike a modern synthesized violin. I thought this was an incredible marriage of classic and modern sound, and if you haven't heard (of) it, definitely look it up sometime! It is mindblowing. Absolutely amazing innovation coupled with creativity and technicality.

Laurie Anderson and her "viophonograph". 1977. (google images)

 

 



       The next show being presented at the time of our visit was Gary Hill's "Glossodelic Attractions (part two)". This was done with a variety of interactive and thought provoking media, but all included an element of film. Gary Hill's work was of special interest to me. Video has never been a medium that I have worked with, but because of that lack in my work, video has never ceased to capture my attention. One of the most striking pieces to me (and the one that is the most memorable) was "Circular Breathing",1994.  It was made up of five video projectors, two speakers, and numerous amounts of gadgetry - the names of which elude me. At first impression, I was startled and almost overwhelmed by the sheer size of the screen and of the images being thrown onto them. Images of a girl reading flashed across one of the panels, whilst on another screen a musician stroked the keys of an old piano. Sound, combined with video, gave a very emotional feel to this piece. The steady rhythm of what sounded like a train, combined with music and the flashing images caused me to stop and reconsider - not what it meant, but what I felt about it. It was a very powerful piece, and I wish I could have looked at it longer.
       Another of his works featured was "The Psychadelic Gedankenexperiment", created in 2011. Here, Gary Hill explores what he calls the most influential "found performance" of art - LSD. In the piece, Hill performs his experiment in a "computer generated anechoic chamber". Throughout the video documenting his gedankenexperiment, Hill constructs a large molecular model of LSD ( or lysergic acid diethylamide. But what makes this piece enthralling is the face that he recorded the spoken text in reverse. He had made four large boards imprinted with language signs he himself created so he could read the sounds backwards. Then, for this exhibition, the video is played in reverse to revert the sound back into regular, comprehensible speech. It was such an off-the-wall piece that I couldn't help but to sit on one of the provided foam chairs to watch and listen to this guy ramble in what seemed to be slowed down speech. I can't tell you why it enthralled me as it did, but it certainly will remain in my mind for a while.