Rawness, Suffering, Education at the Bemis Art Show

Photos from the show. Click to embiggen.

Machine Horror House at the Bemis Art Show went pretty damn great. First day, I was tired and raw. Severely so, having been up till 6:30am that morning babying the animation renders along. I felt like I could see people responding to every little fault, and the agony of it being, I knew all those faults and could not change them. If I only had more time to clean up the lip sync anim in Fear the Future. To get the timing of the moving streets in Sick Robot correct between all three screens. And why did the clanking robot jaws have to go on so long? People would walk out of the show at certain times, and I would think I knew why.

That’s just lack of sleep and being hyper-invested in your work. People leaving a video-based exhibit midway through is the normal ebb and flow of an art show, of course. I’m sure I’m a bit of a noob at presenting my work in these situations. Although I’ve done some form of the public show many times before, I’ve never had a recorded work play in front of an audience to entertain them in this way.

After the rawness wore off, I was able to watch constructively, and wow, did I get an education. What is the difference between having eight people watching instead of three? Well, eight people get silly and light, laugh out loud, and maybe clap at the end. Three people respectfully consider your work in silence. Also, people don’t know where to stand or what to do when they come in. Somebody or something has to give them permission to walk around the room instead of hanging back. There were countless lessons learned with this show. Stuff about timing, presentation, talking to people without creeping them out. Yeah, it was definitely valuable.

What I’m left with is a passion to get more out of the audience with the next production. This is new for me. Before the show, the overall goal was self-expression. Kind of like I put something on the screen that is me, and people would like it as a side effect of successful self-expression. But now, having some encouraging hints of possibilities, I am fascinated with the mechanics of the audience. Where do people stand? What are they likely to think? Will this kind of character be funny? If I play music at one point, will people dance? And I know there is a huge amount that can be done, and new types of experiences that can be created, particularly when I get the Kinects integrated into the animation.

So I’m really fired up for the next project, Machine Court, which will be fully interactive and have crazy new stuff in it. But I’m also exhausted. I think I’ll waste this evening playing Minecraft and let my brain do the mysterious things it needs to do to rejuvenate.