Ambient art: in an exhibition sponsored by Creative Time at the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, artists explored ways that new technology can produce absorbing synthetic environments - Digital Media - Brief Article

"Massless Medium: Explorations in Sensory Immersion," the latest of Creative Time's annual summer exhibitions in the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, featured seven site-specific installations that explored, in the words of the organizers, "how technology has shifted the way we experience space and time." While its title set up expectations of an empty space devoid of definable art objects, the exhibition proved to be a richly sensuous experience. The participating artists, all heirs apparent to the Minimalism of artist James Turrell or composer Steve Reich, use technology to convey a wide range of audio and visual sensations.

Entering the cavernous dark of the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, visitors intuitively might have reached for a flashlight. But a sign at the door informed them that the exhibition was most easily negotiated with a Palm Pilot, thanks to the navigational guideposts of Firefly, a project designed by architects Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger of Antenna Design. Firefly tied everything together with a series of skeletal illuminated objects--a chair, a child's bed, a sink, a ladder--which shimmered in the darkness like bright line drawings and lit the way to the next installation. When holding a Palm Pilot, the viewer would receive, via an infrared beam, an on-screen digital animation that responded to touch with a comic commentary on the object at hand. For example, near the illuminated sink, an image of a pool of water appeared that made puddles and ripples when the viewer tapped the screen. The ladder launched a flock of angels, the table set out a plateful of goodies that were gobbled before your eyes. But best of all was the icon for the installation itself, a cloud of fireflies that swarmed and dispersed, glowing in the palm of your hand.

While the soaring vaults and towering brick walls of the Anchorage tend to dwarf art projects, the artists in "Massless Medium" conquered this overwhelming site. Andreas Angelidakis describes himself as an architect, yet his projects more often than not examine space beyond and between traditional buildings. His installation, My Anchorage, a video projected onto a large screen with a musical soundtrack by a fellow Greek, composer nanogod, filled the Anchorage's entire first bay. This computer-drawn animation in monochromatic tones presented a tour of a sleek modernist environment that continually inverted indoors to outdoors, turning the surrealistic scenes into a perpetually rotating Mobius strip. Angelidakis's esthetic, on one level, seemed inspired by the paranoia-filled environments of video games, but it also recalled 19th-century optical toys, such as the zoetrope and praxinoscope, precinematic mechanical devices that mesmerized Victorian households.

Examining "spectacle" in more down-to-earth terms, Shaded Bandwidths, by Anney Bonney and Liz Phillips, was equally absorbing. This video-and-sound installation incorporated images of pedestrians crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, projected onto multiple screens that stood on the floor of the Anchorage. As viewers walked through the space, their movements triggered subtle changes in the images and sound, not unlike the shifting perspectives and random thoughts that are occasioned when crossing the vast span between Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was entirely unnecessary to know that the moody and romantic Shaded Bandwidths was intended as an exploration of "ghosting," the random feedback that occurs when architectural protrusions interfere with radio transmissions.

Two artists--Leo Villareal and Francisco Lopez--truly fulfilled the promise of "Massless Medium," achieving bewildering and disorienting results with the most minimal resources. Villareal's Firmament invited viewers to lie back in a lounge pit, a cushy seating arrangement covered in industrial foam packing material. Mounted on the ceiling in concentric circles, an array of strobe lights flashed in dazzling computer-generated patterns. Though the effects were entirely synthetic, it was hard not to imagine fireworks, flashes of lightning, even fireflies, while watching this hypnotic light show. Lopez's Buildings (New York), presented in a dimly lit vault and best experienced with one's eyes closed, converted the sounds from office buildings--the hum of boiler rooms, air conditioners, fluorescent lights--into a convincing tour of urban space. Listening to Buildings, it was impossible to escape the feeling of moving through empty corridors, even while standing completely still. These two works made brilliant use of technology, demonstrating digital art's potential to create all-encompassing environments, simultaneously visceral and conceptual.

Marco Brambilla is no stranger to special effects, given his background as a director of such feature films as Demolition Man (1993), starring Sylvester Stallone. This credential would not be held against him if his installation, Arcadia, had managed to convey the thrill of its subject matter, a ride on Ohio's Millenium Force, one of the world's highest roller coasters. Brambilla shot the coaster filled with screaming passengers, climbing to its peak, then racing down at astronomical speed. Using DVD, he then slowed the action to a snail's pace. While mildly intriguing, the installation--two stacks of plasma screens (one showing the cars going up the hill, the other coming down) standing face-to-face with barely 2 feet between them--made the films almost impossible to watch. Likewise, Erwin Redl's huge floor-to-ceiling curtain of red and blue LED lights, Matrix, IV, tended to induce a headache; I was forced to stop looking after a very short time. Though LEDs, as a fundamental component of digital imagery, are theoretically interesting as a medium, these pinpoints can be too painful to gaze at.