Act/React

Milwaukee’s Art Museum is truly a world class institution. It is a great place to see extremely talented up and coming and influential artists in a local setting. This blog will attempt to describe and compare the works of Camille Utterback’s “Untitled 5” and Daniel Rozin’s “Snow Mirror.”

Camille’s work consists of a vertical screen on the wall in front of the viewer, and a floor mat that tracks the users bodily movements from a camera attached to the ceiling. When left alone for a long period of time, the screen slowly fades to white in the absence of human presence. When the camera does pick up movement on the mat, the screen in front of the user displays those movements in several different ways. A thin, red line follows the precise movement of the user around the mat, while black zigzags indicate the relative presence of the user at any one time. If the user leaves the range of the camera and steps off the mat, the black zigzags disappear and the solitary red line is left. The line is then dotted by little black spots. Now this is where the display gets interesting. If another user or the same user steps back on to the mat, the black spots are broken up into hundreds of tiny splotches wherever the new user is present. When the new user moves into a different area of the mat, these little splotches attempt to make their way back to the red line, leaving behind a smeared trail of their passing. If many users are participating in this work of art, the result can be a very beautiful 2 dimensional piece of abstract art. One is reminded of a floral pattern upon viewing this work when many users are present.

The other work of interactive art viewed was a piece by Daniel Rozin. He had several installments in this exhibit, but one of the most interesting was a piece entitled “Snow Mirror.” This title reflects exactly the workings of the piece of art. If the viewer stands outside the view of the camera, he or she is shown a background of mountains with snow falling. If the user were to stand in front of this screen, a camera would pick up the movements and describe it on the screen in front the user. The result is a 2 tone image of the user in which they seem to be constantly falling apart into little pieces of snow and being re-displayed anew upon the screen. The effect of this is very meditational. The user is transported to a different time, place or universe.

When comparing these two works, the first difference that comes to mind is that Rozin's piece is much more instantaneously responsive to each movement of the user. Hence the "mirror" in the name. In Utterback's piece, the artwork is responsive, but it may take a while for the user to figure out the "rules" of the piece. Moving a certain way doesn't necessitate a certain exact response every time. In addition to this, Utterback's work gives the user more of an "ownership" feel when compared to "Snow Mirror." This is due to the fact that the piece is more of a palette with rules than a traditional concept of art. The user truly feels that they created the work together with the help of the original artist. "Snow Mirror" seems more like traditional art in this way, yet still responding to the user's input.

These are just two of the many exceptional pieces of artwork displayed at the Milwaukee Museum of Art’s Act React showcase. Many more can be found there, and the sum of the parts make up the whole, so as to make the users part of the artwork themselves.