Interactive Sculpture: Interconnectedness (2024)

Interactive Performance (40-min)

Documentation video 8-min edited version: https://youtu.be/b48fqK70xYg

The work delves into the intricate web of interpersonal connections that weave through our lives, shaping and activating our bodily senses in profound ways. Through the instruction which sets the participants to a realm of unlimited actions, they are also implied to explore the sets of objects and other participants with creativity. This process allows for a more authentic and intimate exchange, unencumbered by societal, ultimately creating a space where an more idea form of connection can flourish. So, as the participants gradually becoming part of this collective sculpture during the 40-min period, they eventually crystallize into a tangible expression of human connection.

During this process, I both take the dynamic social environment as the subject and voluntarily give away my power as the artist to the participants, acting instead as a facilitator who offers them access to a set of instructions and inspirations so that they can gain specific social experiences. This artwork is another workspace where I continue developing my overarching theme: that art should take as its subject the entirety of either subjective life, communal shared experience, or the dynamic social environment, rather than isolating objects or representations removed from daily life.

Specifically, the choices of objects and rules involved are intentional in the direction of either activating specific senses of the participant’s body, or physically connecting the participants more in harmony (yarn and mylar in stripes). The instruction that forbids verbal communication releases the participants from the alienation and societal rules that typically govern interactions between strangers. These conventional barriers are expected to gradually diminish, fostering genuine connection and interaction.

As the performance progresses and more interactions occur, participants are expected to rely on their other senses to engage with one another. The ice cubes activate their skin sensations to coldness, the eyeshadow palette, resembling a palette yet is applicable to the skin, activates the visual, and smells of the flowers activate the smelling side. The comic book, devoid of a cover and rendered unreadable, serves a dual purpose as both a mere stack of paper and a repository of potential content awaiting interpretation. The sounds of mylar activates the auditory sense while reflecting lights all over the space.

The process

The process starts with asking 6-10 people including the artist to sit in a circle in darkness. The only instruction forbids verbal or language communication (excluding singing or making other sounds), and the participants will be asked to do anything within the 40-minute performance. In an order with several minutes of interval, I, the artist, will be picking up a series of objects that were prepared ahead of time and doing a series of actions.

 

These objects include:

       1. a flashlight as the only light source

       2. 4 sets of black yarn, each 5 meters long and 1 scissor

       3. Two bunches of flowers

       4. Pages of a whole comic book ripped off from the book, excluding the cover page

       5. 2 sheets of mylar material (or emergency blanket) and 1 scissor

       6. A eyeshadow compact that has 72 color choices and 1 brush

       7. A box of ice cubes

 

These actions, in order, are as follow:

 

1.     Turn on the light source.

2.     Tangle the participants randomly using the yarn and handing the rest of the yarn and the scissor to a random participant, and do a gesture of "please keep going" (palm facing up and pointed at the direction of my movement).

3.     Similarly, hand two flowers to two participants, and then hand the rest of the flowers to another participant.

4.     Hand two ice cubes to two participants, and then hand the rest of the ice cubes to another participant.

5.     Hand the comic book to a random participant.

6.     Cut the mylar sheet into stripes and tangle them around participants, and hand the rest of the sheet and the scissor to a random participant. Later, hand the other sheet of whole mylar sheet to another participant.

7.     Using the eyeshadow compact, draw random patterns over some participants' face (waited a bit in the gesture of holding up the brush, so that if the participants show any expression of refusal, go to another participant), and then hand the eyeshadow set and the brush to a participant.

8.     Start documentation of the process using a video camera. (Another camera over a tripod was set prior to the start of this process, but unfortunately the camera unexpectedly stopped recording after eighteen minutes.)

 

Participants’ actions and feedbacks

       A few participants really enjoyed the process while one of them took a nap. Two participants specifically told me that they liked the instruction that forbids verbal communication as that “got rid of the unnecessary part of interactivity and started straight into it”.

They generally thought of it as a playful activity off from their phone and got relaxed, and they made quite a lot of creative objects including:

-       A ladder made by branch part of the flowers and yarn.

-       A “boat” made by the comic book page with petals on it.

-       Flowers were inserted all over someone’s hair.

-       A “vessel” made by two yarn sets.

-       A few orgami, including a paper crane.

-       A flower’s petals were painted by eyeshadow colors.