School of Art opens video art exhibit Perpetual Art Machine
For many, art is often too distant to enjoy, created in some far-off land and hung on a pristine white wall in a gallery where there are big signs saying, “Do not touch.”
PERPETUAL ART MACHINE
Step 1: Artists submit movies with keywords to the Web site, where they are organized by keywords and then put into a database.
Step 2: PAM groups movies together based on keywords and then plays a grid of up to 16 movies on the installation space.
Step 3: When they have finished playing, or if PAM decides to stop them, a new group of movies begins based on keyword associations with each other and the previous movies.
Step 4: PAM sometimes may decide to highlight one movie by playing it in full-screen mode.
Step 5: Users interact with PAM via a touchscreen. They can choose which artists’ movies to play and then which ones to play in full-screen. Afterward, PAM thanks them for their participation.
But the Perpetual Art Machine (or PAM), a video art exhibit opening tonight at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, has broken down the wall between the artist and the audience.
“(We are trying) to turn what is traditionally known as a viewer into a
user,” said Lee Wells, a founding member and public relations manager of PAM. He and a collaborative team of artists and web designers first launched the site in January of 1996.
Basically, PAM is an online database of more than 1,000 videos, with more than 600 member-submitted videos in the exhibit, including pieces from across the world. The artists submit keywords with their videos, making them searchable by theme.
The gallery-installation incarnation of PAM is fully interactive, complete with touch screens and massive projected video.
The software on the touch screen gives a number of keywords to choose from. When one is chosen, the program displays 16 randomly selected videos that were submitted with that keyword.
Different videos can then be touched to make them take up the entire screen, in essence creating a new video.
Originally, Wells was curating art in New York and put out an open call for video submissions. He then would put together DVDs of the works and organize showings.
“I was inundated with hundreds of artists’ work, and only so many videos will fit on a DVD,” Wells said. “There was always so much great work, but I had to choose what could fit in a program and work … with each other [in a curatorial way].”
He then met with Raphaele Shirley, Christopher Borkowsky and Aaron Miller to casually brainstorm ideas for expanding the project.
“Over a 12-pack of beer and a few hours in one meeting we came up with this idea of how we could include everybody,” Wells said. “And we wanted to take it a step further . and include all the visitors and make it an interactive experience.”
From there they created the software that they describe in the manifesto on their Web site as “a living database” and “a breathing archive,” among other organic metaphors.
Now the exhibit has traveled around the world to art and music festivals and museums, though the University will be its first state school, and Wells said it’s been something of a “social experiment.”
“I’ve found there’s a lot of the things that the general public appreciates and enjoys that some museum [curators] would never curate,” Wells said.
Jeffrey Whittle, the gallery director in the Lamar Dodd School of Art, contacted Wells a few months ago hoping to bring the installation here.
“(PAM) kind of crosses over a bunch of borders in the arts,” Whittle said. “It’s great exposure for students – an opportunity to see what’s going on in video arts in the country and around the world.”
Wells agreed with Whittle that it is a great opportunity for University students. Video art, with elements ranging from classic cinema to YouTube style shorts, can interest not just art majors but anyone who studies human culture.
“I think there’s something in this that’s worthwhile not just for the art school but the greater community down at UGA,” Wells said.
