While some students used Labor Day as an opportunity to sleep in on a Monday, University artists working on SPACES at Foster Gallery worked to set up their exhibit for its Sept. 7 opening.
Nick Hwang, a musical composition doctoral student, stood over the debris of materials and tools in the first room of the gallery, explaining the arrangement. He said the interactive exhibit will feature three pieces, allowing viewers to progress from the first to the third, interacting with each uniquely engaging segment. He then approached the third, which he and Tom LaPann, master in fine arts, conceptualized together.
“Back in March, we had this idea that we wanted to have this interactive environment,” he said. “We had this idea of having plants or a plant-like environment.”
The two opened a related exhibit during the summer but decided they could create another interesting display that was bigger with different textures.
Their towering piece — the largest of the three — sat in the corner of the gallery’s last room, its twisted pillars under construction by other art students and friends. They tacked on papier-mâché and bristley substances where lights and sounds would emit from the exhibit.
Viewers will navigate the cavern-like structure in complete darkness, with a small orb of light to guide their way through the space. As they study the pieces’ details, lights and sounds will react to their presence.
“My background is music and sound, and [Tom’s] is sculpture. So it seemed like a good idea to play with space and play with things that have some level of interactivity with sound,” Hwang said. “It’s like a whole mixture of what Tom and I are interested in.”
LaPann reiterated this idea.
“It’s two areas of interest really making one piece,” he added. “It’s a different viewing experience when you’re participating and something’s reacting to you, than coming into a gallery and having more of a distant relationship. When you’re actually engaging, it becomes more personal to the viewer.”
While the pair originally planned to create this piece by itself, they realized the other two works featured similar characteristics and would mesh well together in a single exhibit.
“All of them, I feel like, make you examine things in a large macro-level and the micro-level,” Hwang said. “We want you to come here and see everything in a big way. There’s big interactions and things like that; at the same time we’re forcing you to use these little lights to see smaller textures.”
Hwang used the first piece as an example. Three photo panels will project images from certain Baton Rouge locations, but they will also serve as speakers, emitting sounds from each corresponding location.
“With the panels having individual sounds, you want to go up and listen and look at each individual panel, as well as stand back and get the overall experience,” Hwang said.
The second, middle piece, allows viewers to control their experience.
Using an Xbox Kinect, viewers will progress through multiple stages of a projected piece of art. One’s position and gestures will allow the projection to zoom in, zoom out and see multiple phases of the projected work.
“It’s kind of like a dialogue between two printmakers,” LaPann explained. “They passed [the print work] back and forth, making adjustments … we photographed it and then removed different stages. So what you’re able to do is interact with different stages of the total process so you can kind of see the whole evolution of the project.”
Like each part of the exhibit, the group constructed the sheet the projection will hit from found materials. The beginning of the semester allowed the group to gather most materials from students and teachers who were clearing out their offices and work places. Hwang explained that the compromise of using recycled materials allowed the group to build the project on such a large scale.
The team combined these elements with electronics to build the screens in the exhibit, which LaPann said adds to the character of each piece. He used the middle segment, which he largely worked on, as an example.
“The back side is made of different materials — it’s got iron ore, and some salt and bamboo sticks and you know, a variety of types of paper,” he said. “The difference in material thickness allows light and images to shine through.”
But Hwang emphasized the importance of the crafted textures over the electronics.
“All the expensive stuff is actually concealed — we don’t want you to see that stuff. The intrigue is all with this stuff,” Hwang said, pointing to the natural-looking texture of their pieces’ column.
Aside from constructing an entire exhibit in a few days, the two also tackled new challenges they had few prior experiences with. They brought together friends and peers to put the exhibit together as fast as they could, while Hwang continued learning how to physically construct art, and LaPann grew more comfortable with allotting project assignments.
“In the beginning, it was very hard to tell people what to do,” LaPann said. “But then you realize they don’t want to come here and figure it out themselves.”
But they both agreed a large part of what brought the project together was the help they had and the multiple creative minds focused on the project.
“Everyone that’s involved has their own specialty,” Hwang said. “It’s turned out to be a great collaboration.”
