8. Installation Art
SOMA
A collaboration at an off campus site for graduate student installation art at the Power Room in Pittsburgh, PA.
Ideation Time: 2 weeks
Installation Time: One Day
Carnegie Mellon / 2018-2019
“This work is a collaboration between Michael Neumann, Anna Henson, Char Stiles, Sudanshu Shekhar and Emily deGrandpré. We will each using our skill sets to create an experimental performance for one night. Anna Henson will be working with interaction design, Rue will be dance, Char will be working with code and Emily and myself will be turning the gallery space into a stage. While our roles speak to our skill sets and reasonably set some expectations, by no means do we claim domain over any one area since blending of our skill and labor inform the overarching integrity, quality and output of the performance.” — MCN
"Activating Spaces is an experimental art project I’m working on that takes on multiple dimensions that spaces and bodies can inhabit. This exhibition will be on November 30th at the Powder Room here in Pittsburgh. With VR I would like work in four areas, interface, projection, public and performance. There are many subcategories to each of these areas such as interaction, social engagement, presence, multi-presence, co-presence, immersion, phenomenology, composition and visual language that I think will help deconstruct and distinguish the nuance in which VR operates. I have been thinking about the reciprocal nature of bodies and spaces through the lens of virtual reality. Does VR alter the way bodies activate spaces and spaces activate bodies? I wonder how the nature of VR could be used to re-examine that relationship. My previous artworks engage bodies moving through virtual spaces, the marks and gestures they leave, interaction between bodies and the performative nature of being in VR. Staying within that trajectory for this project I wanted to make gestural drawings in the virtual world that record the history of actions thus implying presence of a body. I also wanted to make gestural marks large enough that they become landscape or environment. I am also spacing out the flattened projection of a VR space with the intention of having people move between the projections. Space, body, and action would be activated by each other and VR would be the tool to allow us to create, manipulate, and record the relationships of these elements." —Michael Neumann
Art Park 2019
In the spring of 2019, at Carnegie Mellon University, I created a solo installation in the Art Park on Forbes Ave. I laser cut some white acrylic pieces as well as mirrored pieces to weave into the fence openings and added string lights to light it up at night.
