Technological themes are ubiquitous in contemporary art. Artworks often force the viewer to mourn the casualties of the digital age—attention spans, connectedness, sense of time, space, and memory. They challenge us to reconcile the absurdity of our practices and expectations, and how quickly they recalibrate themselves as technology progresses (see Arcangel). Such sentiments have inspired art for centuries, and reasonably, now more than ever it seems.
GeekDown is an antidote to the dystopic vision we’ve come to expect from art that highlights technology as medium and/or subject. The exhibition at 92YTribeca presents a showcase of young minds from NYU and RISD that hark back to the kids section of the science museum, where we were excited to learn through interaction, delighted and inspired all at once.
One standout is Nick Yulman’s "Song Cabinet," an interactive mechanical musical installation. Atop an old wooden cabinet a card reads “please open drawers.” Each drawer is rigged up to play sound with various knick knacks, sea shells, a xylophone. More complex beats emerge the farther the drawer is pulled out of the cabinet.
Another favorite is Jack Kalish and Yonatan Ben Simhon’s "Illumination." From afar, the installation seems to be a writing desk with an overhead lamp shining on a clipboard. Up close the lampshade houses a light projector and downward facing camera. The viewer is invited to place any printed text on the clipboard. The camera takes a photo, which is downloaded to an OCR (optical character recognition) script that scans the page. The words are processed by an algorithm that contains a model of grammatical structures taken from thousands of existing works of literature and poetry. After scanning for these patterns, the projector lights up single words on the page to reveal a poem.
Refreshingly unfocused on the Internet, nor on nostalgia of analog technologies, the exhibit instead contains stimulating work that combines artful concepts with technical ambition and prowess.
See GeekDown at 92Y Tribeca before it ends on September 9th
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