Kenneth Edmund Rinaldo: Watchers
Photo from kenrinaldo.com
Title:
- Watchers
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
- ISEA97: Eighth International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More artworks from ISEA97:
Artist Statement:
Watchers could best be described as two biomorphic ambient light works that are concerned with the rhythmic nature of television light and how it is used to seduce here, as the medium is no doubt designed to infect rather than inform, and so the medium joins with vestiges of our perceptual being. The forms themselves incorporate disembodied TVs and are roughly based on the structure of the human eye. These TVs are encased in plaster forms which project the TV light onto white plaster parabolic lenses which accentuate the light while removing the images. The abstract eyeball form itself is outside the loop of seeing and houses the TV receivers and infrared sensing circuitry. This is clearly emblematic of Marshall McLuhan’s notion that the medium is the massage. The retina and brain are removed from the loop of seeing. It is not what we see but how we see that determines the power of any medium. Here the power of the medium is removed and distilled from its content to point to the medium’s ability to alter our body image non-consciously.
