July 29, 2007, 2:09 pm : Interactive Spaces | Richard Serra in NYC

Before my Vans had come out of the suitcase at the hotel in NYC, I had the copy of TIMEOUT NYC open, scanning the museums and galleries. Quickly I found an old favourite – Richard Serra. I studied at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, with the Art Institute meters away from our studios, providing a free place to hang out and a constant source of inspiration. Across town, the equally inspirational (but not free) Walker Art Centre provided the more (ahem) new school work that I was drawn to, having found that Late Modern Art was the place on the Art History timeline that pulled on my heart and mind. I had a fantastic professor, Philip Larson, who was at one time curator of the Walker. Phil would tell great stories, the most notorious was that he had witnessed a gallery installation technician crushed by a Richard Serra work as it was being placed in the gallery. This sense of danger, along with the texture, mystery and scale of Serra’s work pulled me to sculpture gardens and exhibitions around the world. With rain clouds overhead, I made my way to MOMA and made my way directly to the Serra’s on level 6: I wasn’t in the mood for the simple beauty of the paintings and photos on levels 2-5 – I wanted to see something big, rusty and potentially lethal. That’s what I found in the entry way: Delineator (1974-75), two massive pieces of rolled steel, one on the floor, the other suspended 25 feet up, forming a giant plus (or a cross). You can stand in the middle of the piece, with the slab above, and feel a real energy from the people in the room watching you, as well as the scale and the thinking ‘where do you run if that sucker comes loose?’. I continued to be blown away by the pieces, leaning, hovering, standing around, undulating from the walls – carefully invading three-dimensional space, creating emotional reactions from me and the others in the galleries – so many people reach out (and try) to touch coarse rusted metal, getting as close as possible, drawn to the work, circling it, crouching and tilting their heads, wondering how something so heavy can be in that position without falling over!

This got me thinking about interactive within 3D spaces. Interactive designers often try to figure out how to get these deep emotional connections using sight/sound/motion by simulating 3D environments on-screen. We are swamped by 3D move-arounds in everything from games to real estate, seeping down into most types of information architecture visualisation. I spent most of my time in the 2nd floor where 3 massive, recent works of undulating metal formed spaces, paths and a disconcerting maze: I was floored! In fact, one guy was so blown away that he didn’t notice that he had walked so far back to get a good look that he was inches from a large plate glass wall. When he turned around to walk away, he smacked the glass wall so hard that people jumped, thinking that one of the Serra’s was falling over – a towel for his bloody nose and a giggling security guard brought peace back to the intimidating and inviting space. I wandered around this room for nearly an hour, thinking that this was where I want to see interactive moving – work that causes people to look to the ceiling and the floor, that makes them circle and ponder, reach and out, and in this case, touch the work. I went out into the rain on 7th Avenue inspired, imagining massive projections on curving, sinuous, sexy walls made of plastic and resin, clusters of LCD screens arranged on ceiling, floors and within odd-shaped spaces, people with mobile phones chirping away with data coming off the surfaces as they moved around and kids and adults alike getting really close and then back up far away to get a glimpse the joy and wonder of the work. Without the bloody noses, of course….another few pages of the notebook to fill on the way back to LA.