North Pitney: C74 Perspective

This interactive maze installation pushes the computer's capabilities and extends the relationship between computers and humans. North creates introduces an human-scale navigable maze that is conceived in a computer, but rendered in the real world. The machine interacts with the humans an changes the path depending on body movement and heat censors. I find interactive enigma installation extremely interesting to the point where I wish I could have experienced it. It would have been a challenge to leave my path with a computer rather than my own insight. Think about it. The computer determines my path through these white static walls. As soon as you walk up the stairs, you can clearly see the exit directly in front of you. However as soon as you start walking towards the exit, the walls move and close you initial way out. If the computer chooses, I can be trapped inside this maze as long as this electronic machine wishes. This concept is quite scary. I do applaud North for his achievements because he took an easy idea and expanded it to greater heights. Scary or not, I would have enjoyed the experience first hand and hopefully one day someone replicates it into a larger maze. Audiences would appreciate the tranformation of a visual space into the real.

Intermedia

Dick Higgin's definition of Intermedia suggests artists explore the territory that lies between "the general area of art media and those of life media." Intermedia allows the artist to incorporate several media forms and reveal an interaction or relationship with one another. This medium is not governed by rules or regulations, therefore intermedia includes the notion of "Fluxus." Fluxus pushes the medium to an innovative artistic experience with the intersection of different medias. Yoko Ono's, Cut Piece, performance demonstrates the characteristics of Fluxus when she allows the audience to decide the outcome of how much is skin is revealed by the cutting of her clothes. During the 70's, this performance was considered taboo, which presents the intermedia aspect to her work. Intermedia is not only interesting and fun, but it expresses an art movement without boundaries or restrictions.

Like I previously stated, Intermedia involves a connection between the art and viewer. Paintings lack any sense of dialogue and audience interaction. They are purely expensive ornaments to the rich, which ultimately limit the number of people who are allowed to view it. The suggestion of "grandeur" steers away from Intermedia because it is a concept of pure media and is not restrained by any institution, unlike the world of painting.

This medium also includes a relationship between art and technology. Today, technology has greatly expanded with the creation of the Web, Video Blogging, light experimentations, higher quality televisions, cell phones, digital cameras, which overall contains faster, more efficient, and easier access components. To a multimedia artist, like myself, this aspect of Intermedia is exciting and expands our thought on the infamous question of "what is art?" There aren't any boundaries in Intermedia, just an interactive fluxus performance.