“Emphasis on construction, manipulating and channeling spectatorial situations reverberates in many artists’ projects notes and statements” this is a quote from the reading ‘Situational Aesthetics’ in relation to the exhibition spaces.
“Experience is all”
A Magician is “an entertainer whom performs conjuring tricks and illusions” or a conjuror (Encarta Word English Dictionary) or as an illusionist is “a person who produces illusions; a conjuror” (The Australian Concise English Dictionary).
Both are terms which are used to describe people who work under the same profession. These artists also manipulate their audience or viewers into perceiving what they wish them to experience normally in the form of a performance or presentation using some type of illusion to alter their perception of the truth.
These works or instillations which were explained in the reading ‘Situational Aesthetics’ transforms artist from a presenter of work which is viewed or interacted with into the artist as a magician or illusionist or even an anti-illusionist to try and trick the audience into a state in which they (the artist) make them try and believe what they want them to believe.
An artist has gone from its original definition of someone who creates art whether painting etc to an artist in the form of an artist using the performing arts without even being in the room. The works within the reading uses the skill of altering the viewer’s perception to make them perceive something from the original.
The use of manipulation as a main area of the art form is used within lighting techniques and sound in Asher’s ‘La jollas’ room. This work alters the perception of the room making the sound minimised in certain areas whilst multiplying in others, playing with the audience and their perception and lack of knowledge to the underlying ability to do this.
“A similar emphasis on construction, manipulating and channeling spectatorial situations reverberates in many artists projects notes and statements”
As a bird is pressed between the bars of a cage as a perfectly 3D square compresses in to 2D leaving the small creature without hope of surviving; our perception is then able to be altered into believing that it has disappeared but only when it reappears from behind the illusionist’s back. The artist Asher “cut a one-and-a-half-inch-deep groove into the bottom of the gallery walls where they meet the floor, creating a separation that evoked a sensation of floating between the walls and the floor.” It is not the reality of what has been done as the bird had been compressed to death or the one and a half inch hole that has been made, it is the after effect in which the audience perceives that you have the ability to feel as though you’re in an area which does not meet the ground leading our experience of the room to change our perception of the space to the idea that we can see an identical live bird so it must be the same one.
These artists have used the same principles and ideas of illusions and the altering of perception to trick the audience into the magic of the experience transforming their work into more than merely artworks, into magic tricks. In this experience we instantaneously want to know the definition and the trick that is hidden beneath the illusion.
Important words and their meanings:
Illusion: Deception, delusion…or a misapprehension of the true state of affairs. (The Australian Concise English Dictionary)
Presentation: An act of presenting something or the state of being presented or a performance put on before an audience. (Encarta Word English Dictionary)
Perception: An attitude or understanding based on what is observed or thought…or the ability to notice or discern things that escape the notice of most people…or any of the neurological processes of acquiring and mentally interpreting information from the senses. (Encarta Word English Dictionary)
Experience: Something which happens to somebody or an event that somebody’s involved in… or knowledge acquired though the senses rather than through abstract reasoning. (Encarta Word English Dictionary)
(Piece inspired by the reading and the recent watching of the movie ‘The Prestige’)
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