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July 22, 2008
Ingenuity Festival : Jared as Artist
OMG! Its Tuesday and the Festival starts on Friday. That's right Ingenuity 2008 is only a few days away. Its 'the' arts and technology festival and its taking place in downtown Cleveland (playhouse square). I'm a featured artist this year and I am building a monster of an installation called 'Hands-Across'. The footprint for the machine is 13'x18'!
Its a photo booth that will scan your entire body after your put your hands and feet in the right positions. Once I have the picture of your body I add you to the group and on another display there is a constant chain of hand holding participants.
Its very fun to be a part of the festival again this year. So everybody come on down! I will be setup in from of the Halle Building on Huron (by one of the entrances) but you won't be able to miss me!
Bring your family and tell your friends!
Jared
Jared at the Ingenuity Festival 2008
Hands-Across.com
JaredJared.com
Here is my interview for the Ingenuity E-Flash newsletter:
Q&A with Jared Bendis
Featured Artist Jared Bendis returns for his second year at Ingenuity with a new installation, Hands Across, which is an interactive piece that will run continuously outside the Tech Center & Gallery on Huron. Hands Across unites Ingenuity attendees into a single chain of "hand-holding" participants that grows throughout the festival and allows person-to-person interaction with tens of thousands of festival attendees without real-life encounters in the same place at the same time...
How exactly will your installation unfold? Describe the photo pods participants will have to walk inside.
That's a very interesting question. “Hands-Across”, which I am still in the process of building, is going to be very large, it is a booth, a capture platform, ramps, and a backdrop. “Unfold” is probably the right term. The original intention was to build a capsule-like backdrop for a photographic doorway. But as I've been building, I have modified the pod concept because of something that has bothered me since last year: the accidental exclusion of participants in wheelchairs (due to the location of the camera). The trick this year was to ask myself "How can I include everyone?" and I used the ADA guidelines for accessibility as a reference, which has had the added advantage of creating a nice flow. A participant will approach “Hands-Across” go up a short ramp to the capture platform, turn to face a large display that will tell them where to place their hands and feet (there us an override switch for wheelchairs) once properly positioned a full body photo is taken and the participant goes down another ramp to exit. It should be a very quick process. You go in, you take the photo and you go out. Last year we assigned people ID numbers so that could find themselves on the website but since people didn’t write them down this year I am hoping to have the installation automatically print out the ID and website address of www.hands-across.com.
Hands Across can be seen as an example of digitally and visually uniting people across a moment in space. How does your work begin to instigate human connections thru the virtual?
When Rita Montlack and I created last year's "Found in a Crowd", we captured the 'group' but displayed them as 'individuals'. Funnily enough, last year, people took their photos in 2s, 3s, 4s and even 5s! This was totally unexpected, but in the end they wanted to be part of a group and to touch each other. So this year my idea is to focus on that touching. By shooting the entire body and having people visually (and virtually) hold hands we are inviting people to see how they connect with those around them, it isn't about seeing their faces on a grid, but within a chain of a community we create.
You note the importance of individual experiences in your artistic statement. To turn the tables, how has Hands-Across affected you in a way that is unique from your other work?
You mean besides the fact that I am photographing people? I don't do portraiture! My primary medium is architectural photography (castles and ruins). As a photographer my motto is: "I travel the world so you don't have to." It’s an idealized form of documentation with art masquerading as truth. But in many ways that is what Hands-Across is as well, people photographed as building blocks of a community that creates something that isn't there but that really might be - its an illusion but its also a reflection.
Do you see immersive virtual reality as something that will eventually transform not only art, but also everyday life? To what extent?
The problem with immersive virtual reality is three-fold: You to learn to shoot it, to display it, and to get people past the past the gee-whiz factor. The bigger problem is that these problems were first written about in 1898 by Oliver Wendell Holmes when talking about stereoscopic imagery - the original immersive virtual reality. This isn't a new question, which in itself is telling. While I'm a firm believer in the power of virtual reality and its transformative nature, I also believe that not everyone will get it. It's a homeopathic technology - if it works for you it will change your life but if it doesn't then you will just think I'm crazy!
Your work certainly has social and cultural undertones…does Hands-Across have a political message?
Hmmm, that's hard for me to answer. It’s not like I’m going to tag people red and blue based on their political affiliations! The goal of the work is to have people look at themselves and others in a different context which is one of unity. So while I can't deny the social or cultural undertones I think I will steer way from the political ones (for the moment).
The continuousness of Hands-Across is especially intriguing. How does the digital create a continuity that couldn't otherwise be achieved?
Now that you ask the question all I can think about is how I could do this without the technology! I could stand there all weekend taking polaroids and then attaching them to a giant pulley system that.... never mind. You have to remember that in the end the installation is not just about the final display system but the entire machine. Think about it this way, as an artist I am building a machine that invites people to participate to add themselves to the collection of photos that will be unified by another machine into a continuous stream.
The installation is about potential and that potential is only reached by people volunteering to be a part of it. It only works if people make it work! But then again how is that different from a painting? If no one looks at it then what good is it? My art just requires the audience to be on both sides of the canvas.
Posted by jeb2 at July 22, 2008 08:21 AM
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Comments
Hey Jared! I love your idea for the ingenuity festival. I can't wait to attend and see how it turns out. Will you have a sign for your display so that we can spot you? Best of luck to you!
Posted by: Heather at July 22, 2008 11:38 AM
Hey Jared. I hope the festival was successful for you and that your monster installation was a big hit. I wish I could have seen it.
Posted by: Willis at August 5, 2008 04:45 PM
What an awesome idea! It's one of those photography projects that I hear about and think, "why couldn't I have thought of that??" Especially since my favorite photo subjects are basically the opposite of yours; I love to take photos of models. And that idea has all the makings of one of the best model portfolios ever!
Posted by: Chris at June 16, 2009 11:17 PM