Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 11:50AM I started collecting pictures of my installation from around the web in one image gallery on this site. You can see all of them, along with descriptions, here.
Monday, May 21, 2012 at 2:49PM The best part of Artomatic, for me, is encountering the unexpected ways in which visitors will interact with your art. My installation, for example, instructs and expects users to print one or two messages from my machine, and then either keep the printout, throw it in the provided wastebin, or pin it to a large corkboard (not shown) hanging opposite the desk.
Here’s how my room looked before opening night.
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Here’s how it looked 24 hours later:
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The corkboard - it’s perhaps 3x2’ - filled up in the first half hour of opening night. Faced with the example of prior visitors, most new users that I observed chose not to keep or discard their printouts, but added them to the walls. It started with a few scraps push-pinned around the corkboard, and then new clusters of text bloomed around the desk, the wall signs, and the entrance. In a way, it actually serves to reinforce the theme of the room. Most people associate words scrawled on walls as a visual evocation of paranoia, loneliness, obsession or incipient mental illness, all of which are evoked in some of the printed texts. I hadn’t expected this, but it’s a lovely, serendipitous use of the space by the participants.
Monday, May 21, 2012 at 12:28PM Weekend Section coverage - nice slideshow with descriptions of the artwork. I spoke with a reporter from the Post last week and I’m happy that they took the time to understand what I was trying to achieve with my installation.
Monday, May 21, 2012 at 12:11PM Nice writeup and slideshow of the 2012 Artomatic event in the Huffington Post last week. There’s a picture of my installation, too.
Artomatic 2012: Massive Art Show Sets Up Shop In Crystal City (PHOTOS)
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Link to my page in the gallery:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/artomatic-2012-crystal-city_n_1525374.html#s=985543
Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 4:28PM Hello everyone - Artomatic 2012 is underway, installation is complete, and I can finally relax and not worry about anything. Except paper jams, running out of paper, user confusion, and the eternal posssiblity that someone will spill a drink on my installation. Anyhow, it’s been a blast so far. Here’s my Artomatic project, in closeup:
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Son of the Adding Machine
It’s a hand-built project (clearly), built around a microcontroller and a thermal printer, just like the kind you’d see in a grocery-store receipt printer, and an arcade game button. You press the button, and - et voila - a mysterious message is printed.
The hardware isn’t the point, really - it’s just the vessel for narrative. If you’ve encountered my little machine, I’d love to hear what you think of the narrator and the various interruptions - email, chat attempts, etc. - s/he faces. I’ll post more details as the show continues. Thanks again!
