. . . Project Two: Physical Sensor/Playback, Re-experience Art Awareness Project
To ironically question the act of museum going, I was tempted and thwarted by the amount of visual attention that is required to click through a menu on a audio device. After studying many a museum visitor during the current Picasso show at SFMOMA, I conjectured the elusive experience we desire in those pristine halls is something that we wish we could re-experience. Knowing that we will soon have “earPods” that use audio cues while dragging a finger on a touch pad, thus giving back our eyes while being hooked up to an electronic device, it is safe to accept that within a few years we will also be able to record our physical reactions/interactions when viewing emotional art connections and then play them back to once again feel the extraordinary reactions brought forth by viewing masterpieces. In addition, we might have someone else experience them by sharing these 'physical reaction files' (.prf).
It is now human nature to record personal music files to take wherever we go. As computing power becomes cheaper and medical sensor systems become wireless, it only seems reasonable that recording everything we humans interact with will be normal. As well, we constantly search to appease our increasing need to find different ways to interact and record using portable devices. Even though this ubiquity of devices with small displays has made us all somewhat visually impaired, that is, reliant on apparatuses to stimulate and record everything, we are slowly adapting to sensory interfaces that become and extension of our bodies. Ten years ago it was not common to see the number of cell phone addicts walking past us as we do now. In the next decade I surmise that we will find a method that allows us to download our complete viewing reaction to a painting, sculpture or conceptual piece and then re-sense it later.
The other issue with this project is what is it about a masterpiece that intrigues and satisfies us. Why is the physical act of viewing so important? Could the physical reaction of viewing a painting replayed supply more than the usual orderly explanation art historian provides? It seems daunting to begin yet I wish to highlight the diversity of masterpieces that have accrued this title and create five or ten minute sensory tapes that could be used in an art appreciation classroom or sold in a bookstore along with specific artists.
The most difficult problem in art history seems to be how do we resolve art’s meaning through interpretation. Theorists link history, artist’s lives through emotion, unconscious desires to specific ‘masterpieces’. This power of academic advertising sets the viewer’s framework. Now with virtual visits to museums, we need to cultivate interactions for the body. We still have one even though we primarily use the eyes and poke the keyboard with our fingers.