[-empyre-] Shadi Nazarian : Participatory Art

[Timothy Murray]

The term "participatory" implies active involvement in a process, 
where the outcome evolves the event and participants; while 
"responsive" indicates something that awaits and invites change. Yet 
the term "Interactive" suggests reciprocally active sides- one acting 
on and influencing the other.  Each of these terms in contemporary 
art/architecture signals possible use of electronic devices that 
allow a two-way flow of information between the work and users, 
responding to the input of the other. Regardless, a construct 
informed by these concepts and technologies would not have 
architectural merit unless it offers new modes of creating or reading 
space.

Documenting tactile, psychological, experiential or temporal 
dimensions of such works are difficult. Our perception and cognition 
of the world around us is made possible by our senses as well as the 
operation and classification of information by the brain. Our ability 
to receive and process simultaneous flow of information brought about 
by various means and media cannot be reproduced or parrallelled by 
any single mode of representation. Virilio writes "With photography, 
seeing the world becomes not only a matter of spatial distance but 
also of time-distance to be eliminated: a matter of speed, of 
acceleration or deceleration."  But we cannot obtain the 
instantaneity of cognition or response that our brain is capable of 
by our current means and technologies no matter how efficient they 
may be. A photographer attempts "to place, within the image, 
information that is not predicted within the program of the camera," 
severs and edits the reality to construct and convey something by 
bracketing it into frames.

In my latest installation when asked to exhibit an intervention I 
decided to pack the space and duration of an architectural experience 
in a spatial frame.  I proposed a tall frame, visible from two 
floors, where the upper and the lower galleries culminated in a 
vertical space. The frame was located in close proximity to a balcony 
that extended into this space offering a simple but dynamic 
architectural experience:  In a distance, on both floors the audience 
found themselves drawn to an intimately scaled enclosure implied by 
the geometries of the vertical frame. Through the frame which was 
curiously hovering in mid air a blue-green glow was visible that 
lured you in. The spatial frame contained a glass wall (aperture), 
which allowed the observers' gaze to focus beyond the frame on an 
electroluminescent object. As you got close enough, your proximity 
resulted in a sudden introversion of the space as this view was 
denied.  The aperture suddenly disappeared as the glass became 
opaque. The observer's gaze instantaneously moved forward twelve 
feet.  Just as the eyes of the observer started to adjust to the 
dynamic perceptual transformation the view was returned. Although the 
audience's crossing of the threshold triggered this dynamic spatial 
shift its reoccurrence was not binary or totally made clear since the 
lower level and upper level audiences could equally trigger this 
spatial introversion creating a more complex and unpredictable game 
scenario, a play of connectivity between the upper and lower 
galleries.



bio:
Shadi Nazarian (US) Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of 
Architecture at University of Buffalo holds a post professional 
degree in architecture with a minor in theory of architecture from 
Cornell University, as well as a Bachelor of Architecture, and a 
Bachelor of Environmental Design, both from University of Minnesota. 
Her current research concentrates on critical readings of space, 
emerging materials and technologies; particularly light emitting 
fibers and polymers that provide alternative readings of surfaces and 
spaces.  Her work assumes the observers as active and ambulatory 
participants who respond to and interact with their material and 
perceptual environment and is made public through experimental 
practice, producing rhetorical artifacts, spaces and infrastructures 
that are publicly exhibited.


-- 

Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University