The Art of Exhibition

        Today I spent a large portion of my day preparing for Watching: An Exhibition of Digital Photographs before the Opening Reception.   Before reading Margaret R. Lazzari’s The Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist, I never realized exactly how much work goes into creating an exhibit.  Counting the time everyone put in, it took over 30 hours, which would have been exhaustingly hard for only one person to do.  I was responsible for the Facebook Event Page creation, which required a lot of collaboration with the person who wrote the Artist’s Statement, the person who created the posters, and the people who provided the photographs.  I was initially very nervous about setting up the exhibit, but working as a whole, with everyone providing his or her opinions and coming to a consensus created a much better exhibit.  This also happened with far more speed than one person could have done it with alone. I was very excited about framing the Inkjet prints we created and displaying them, however when the final touches were put on the exhibit (due to technical difficulties photos unavailable, but coming soon!), it soon was obvious that the most interesting part of the exhibit was the magazines.  By themselves the magazines would not nearly have been as interesting, but when present to complement the pictures, they stole the show.  The magazines held the attention of the visitors far longer than the pictures did.

Mary Ann Doane describes digital media as a media “of pure abstraction incarnated as a series of zeroes and ones” in her Indexicality and the Concept of Medium Specificity.  She mentions that the “finger’s preeminent status as the organ of touch” is eliminated with digital media.  In a sense she is correct, however in another sense, that is not necessarily valid.  Digital art is a media created through abstraction, but it can be incarnated through various printing processes, or possibly even film.  It can be displayed in a gallery, as can any other art.  Galleries do not often let viewers touch the art within (naturally there are exceptions), so there is no use of the finger’s status as the organ of touch in any of these galleries.  When I walk through an art gallery I often wonder what to do with my hands so as not to reach out and touch the artwork.  Art needs to be preserved, and to do that, original pieces cannot be touched, while digital pieces can, because they can be remade.  There is no fear of degradation.  Our gallery had the aspect of touch, through utilization of collections within a magazine, and really caused the audience to show interest.  They were able to interact with the art and really understand the artist’s theme by having the magazines present, but also show it to a friend who may have been across the room, without them having to move.

I believe this experience has shown that there is a wonderful place for digital media in this world.  Obviously video cannot be touched, but it can be experienced over and over again in large quantities and with large groups of people, same with digital photographs.  There is no fear of ruining the original, because any copies made and displayed are exactly that, copies.  Digital media has created the ability to share art far differently than it has been shared in the past.  There is no fear of degradation of the original if it has been copied into a physical format.  This seems to open up many doors for art exhibitions that unfortunately people aren’t quite utilizing yet.

People Watching in Photo Part II

Transforming my People Watching project into a magazine took quite a bit of work.  I had to completely reevaluate my original idea in terms of presentation.  Putting a series of three pictures into a magazine format would have proved challenging and would have left something out if they were to be grouped together.  I came to the conclusion it would have to be either a series of 4 or a pair of pictures instead of a series of 3.  Creating a series of 4 pictures did not seem best to convey the idea of a single moment captured in time because it would be split up over a series of 2 pages.  This is not what I intended, which is why I chose pairs of pictures over a series of 4 for the magazine format.  Morphing my series into pairs proved difficult when taking pictures out of existing series, but it allowed for more variation in the pictures I was able to use because I was able to pull out any one of the series and still have it work as a pair.  Often it became stronger as a pair rather than a series.  The move from threes to  pairs allowed for my set to have a little more flow, but yet still be open for interpretation.    I wanted a sequence that conveyed movement to others as I saw it, just as Robert Frank wished to "create a form that enabled him to convey his understanding of the country with such strength, conviction, and immediacy that it would engender similar experiences in others," as Sarah Greenough points out in her "Transforming Destiny into Awareness: The Americans".  Frank did this by establishing a specific order, which he didn't change through any of the editions.  I on the other hand have established a sequence, which was cut down to a pair.  I do not wish to cut my pair down to a single picture because this will disrupt the idea I am trying to convey.  The order of my pairs does not mean much, but the fact that they are paired helps me to better convey the idea of movement and where it takes us.