New media art gives creative spin to impersonal technology
By Daily Bruin Staff
Sept. 28, 2000 9:00 p.m.
 F2F "Alphabets" by Leena Saarto is one of the
contemporary media works in the exhibit "F2F: New Media Art from
Finland" which is showing now in the New Wight Gallery.
By Michael Rosen-Molina
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Digital art often seems as cold and sterile as the technology
that produced it. Not so with F2F: New Media Art from Finland, the
new art exhibition in the Wight Gallery.
The show strives to put a human face on intimidating technology.
Finland has long been a pioneer in both the digital and wireless
communications fields and a home to avant-garde art. F2F bridges
the two divergent fields through a wide mix of interactive art
projects.
Aided by the soothing yet strangely unsettling call of seagulls
from some unseen exhibit, F2F transforms the Wight Gallery into an
eerie netherworld of white planes and dark corners. Soft music and
moody sound effects further heighten the experience.
Some of the art is fun and playful, like Juha Huuskonen’s
“Mirror ++.” A favorite with children, the work acts as
a blue-tinted kaleidoscope that captures the viewer’s image
and projects it, swirling and repeating, onto a nearby wall.
Other works touch a deep chord within the human psyche.
Heidi Tikka’s “Mother, Child,” for example,
simulates the experience of cradling a new-born baby. It invites
the viewer to sit on a chair and drape a white towel across
themselves, as an overhead projector casts an image of a baby on
his lap. The baby, and image of Tikka’s real-life daughter,
smiles and gurgles in response to the movements of the person
“holding” her.
While “Mother, Child” shows technology’s
capacity to inspire compassion, other works warn of how impersonal
technology can drain compassion from a society. Spectators watch,
unmoved, as animated figures meet their doom in
“Hit2morrow.”
 F2F Tuomo Tammenpää’s exhibit, "Need" features
a fictitious product which questions the realities of what is
needed in life. “Hit2morrow” mocks the human tendency
toward fatalism with a prognostication archery game. Patrons take
turns firing a foam-tipped bow and arrow at a virtual target. A
direct hit on the bulls eye reveals a short computer animated
prediction about the future.
“Tomorrow,” one enigmatic forecast warns,
“everyone will drown.” A hapless group of
pastel-colored people, bearing an eerie resemblance to the giant
stone heads of Easter Island fame, dance in the field before a
Kremlin-like building. Before the viewer’s eyes, the water
level starts to rise, slowly but surely consuming the islanders,
who continue their relentless capering until the bitter end.
“Hit2morrow’s” predictions are not always so
dire, ranging from the strange to the absurd to the disturbing.
When the piece claims that “tomorrow the chosen one will
arrive,” it is accompanied by a film of the same animated
islanders on the run from tanks.
At the last second, a giant floating cross rips across the
screen, drops bombs on the pursuing tanks, then blasts off into
space. “Tomorrow we will be many” features the same
islanders, lined up in rows, slowly multiplying, while eerie techno
music plays.
Technology can be used to fill human needs, but often its
excesses encourage people to label their “wants” as
“needs.”
“Need,” Tuomo Tammenpää’s wry
comment on consumer culture, caused a stir when it first premiered
in Los Angeles. Before the opening, Tammenpää posted
signs and distributed leaflets at restaurants and coffee shops
around town, advertising an imaginary product called
“Need.”
Although the concept first mystified some patrons,
Tammenpää’s intentions became clear when customers
actually began calling in to order “Need.” Although
they had no idea what the product was, they were convinced that
they desperately needed to possess it.
The sculpture itself consists of a small sterile-white alcove,
lit by almost blinding white lights. Neatly arranged stacks of CDs,
boxes, bottles, pill packs, solution vials and aluminum cans, each
bearing the “Need” logo, line the surrounding glass
shelves. Not surprisingly, each box is empty and every CD is blank:
The mysterious “Need” that everyone needs is nowhere to
be found.
A computer terminal additionally allows viewers to visit the
“Need” Web site, become members, and
“order” nonexistent “Need” merchandise.
The Internet is also an integral part of “IceBorg,”
a virtual world that builds on the same technology as do Internet
chat rooms, allowing viewers to use an animated avatar to explore a
virtual world. Andy Best’s simulated planet represents a
deserted mining asteroid, over-exploited and plagued by
pollution.
Apparently, many years ago, a space transport crashed, stranding
its helpless crew on the desolate rock. While awaiting rescue, the
survivors have built a new civilization.
The audience can explore the intricacies of the asteroid society
through their character, a leg-less blue humanoid wearing a space
suit that strolls leisurely across landscapes of burning lava and
frigid ice on his unusually long arms. The wandering creature can
stride through an ocean of molten rock just as easily as he can
float above it and his calm fluid movements draw the viewer into
his faux reality.
Although it uses real actors, Teijo Pellinen’s
“Aquarium” creates a world no less
“virtual.” The piece is based on a popular interactive
Finnish television series of the same name.
Set up to resemble a living room, the viewer sits in a plush arm
chair to watch a television show about a bored Finnish couple. A
convenient telephone allows the viewer to direct the actions of the
characters using a choose-your-own-adventure format by pressing
different buttons to perform various actions.
With such wildly original ideas, the only limits on the show are
not imposed by lack of imagination, but by the inherent
difficulties of dealing with new technology.
Unfortunately, not every piece of art goes off snag-free and a
couple pieces are still under construction. Even so, the projects
look promising and minor technical difficulties should not deter
people from exploring this unique show.
The somber mood of the gallery gives the exhibition an
unsettling otherworldly quality. While this might not exactly meet
the show’s goal of mollifying technophobes, the atmosphere
does suit an exhibition that showcases both the yin and yang of new
technology. With the artists’ astute observations of human
nature, F2F makes for an exciting and thought-provoking
experience.
ART: F2F, New Media in Finnish Art is on display in the New
Wight Gallery in Dickson Arts Center through October. For more
information, contact Heather McGee at (310) 825-5863, or visit
www.f2fmedia.net.
