Wall Street brokers are used to stopping in their tracks to follow the vertiginous rise of technology stocks. But on Thursday, in the belly of New York's financial district at 55 Broad St., they stopped short to watch the technology itself. Crowding into chairs in the lobby, financial analysts joined security guards and curious tourists to pass their lunch hour witnessing digital art - from "video kinesis" to "sonic sculpture" - cascade across a 14-foot video wall.
"Japan programs art exhibitions in department stores. So why not?" says Kathy Brew, director of the nonprofit Thundergulch, which sponsored the series. The art, created by international artists collective ASCI (Art & Science Collaborations Inc.), is just one of a "lunchtime@thewall" series to draw crowds and culture downtown.
While the financial district might seem an unlikely refuge for art, Brew has specifically programmed a diverse array of projects, including work from New York Video Festival, experimental artists Harvestworks, and even Lucent Technology's multimedia R&D lab.
Thursday's show kicked off with the hyperactive "Video Kinesis," by William and Kathleen Lizaza, a psychedelic video-pastiche set to the sounds of organic munching. By retrofitting a camera with a kaleidoscope on the lens, the group has taken a distinctly low-fi approach to its art. Despite the dizzying effect, the show seemed to win over even accidental viewers. "I'm waiting for a friend," said businessman Nick Tsororos, lingering in the lobby, "But hopefully he'll be late."
Though not expressly "interactive," the series hopes to the draw people into "physical linkages," says Brew. "You don't just have to sit in front of a computer and point and click," she says. "There was a reason people went to the Coliseum - we want a communal experience."
For artists fettered by the "insularity of the art world," the series seeks to release them from conventional venues, adds Brew. As ASCI member and dancer Lizaza describes, Thundergulch has invigorated the search for new audiences by setting up shop where people can't ignore it. "Art should be where people are," she says.
While token lobby-art has become the standard fare for big businesses, ASCI's work is "not typical public art," says member M. R. Petit, who walked through her paranoid narrative CD-ROM, The Mutant Gene & Tainted Kool-Aid SideShow. "[Lobby-art] has ... to be semi-benign and not shocking," says Petit, whose own work explores "definitions of normalcy."
By reclaiming the entire lobby for the exhibition, the Thundergulch series violates the central tenet of safe, inconspicuous work. More traditional lobby art "can't impede people from going from point A to B," says Petit, but Thursday's show was happy to create obstacles. Even the delivery boys had to struggle to navigate the lobby, and in that respect, added Petit, this series "is totally bizarre."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
