Surrounded by hundreds of cell phones? Typically, that would be anyone’s worst nightmare. But at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, it’s called art.
The museum is the first US exhibit to showcase an entire collection devoted to the cell phone. The show, dubbed Cell Phone: Art and the Mobile Phone, features more than 30 international artists, from video great Nam June Paik to new media collective, Informationlab. The mix of programmers, mixed-media and urban artists highlight the impact of cell phones on everyday life. The exhibit, on display until April 22, shows off a mash-up of camera phones, videophones, global positioning systems, Bluetooth technology, ring tones and messaging tech.
Check out some of these modern works of art in our gallery.
Consider Beatrice Valentine Amrhei’s Video Lustre — a chandelier made out of 27 cell phones, each playing short videos representing the body. “The piece takes on a physical, sculpture form, but is also animated with videos on each screen, proving that it can be used as more than just a singular device,” says curator and museum director Irene Hofmann.
Brooklyn-based Paul Notzold developed a series of SMS-enabled interactive street performances, called TXTual Healing. Viewers are invited to send a text message to a mobile paired to Notzold’s Mac; as the text arrives it’s displayed in speech bubbles projected onto the side of a building.
It’s this sort of user participation that pulls in the crowds, Hofmann says. “It’s not intimidating because everyone can walk in and use their own devices that they’re familiar with, to control, contribute or activate an artwork. There’s no hierarchy of artist and viewer — it all merges.”
Amsterdam’s Informationlab, a new media collective with Ursula Lavrencic and Auke Touwslager, put together an electromagnetic LED installation that responds to viewers’ cell phone signals.
“It’s very difficult to imagine how all the wireless signals coexist around us. And it’s difficult for a person to build up a relationship with something that he or she cannot grasp with their senses,” says Lavrencic. “Cell Phone Disco is a simple interface that reveals one of the layers of this electromagnetic jungle around us in a kind of playful way.”
So pull out your cell for this exhibit — for once, you won’t have to feel like that asshole on the phone.
