The artist Christopher Baker is a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota, reaching his Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Media Arts. Prior to his career as an artist Baker was a scientist working with to develop brain-computer interfaces at UCLA and the University of Minnesota. Applying knowledge of his history to the work he creates, one notices the application of his prior career to his new passion. Baker produces work that “engages the rich collection of social, technological, and ideological networks present in the urban landscape”. By combining aspects of these environments, Baker works to produces relationships within and between these networks. The work results in thought-filled and inspiring works that force thoughts of interconnection amongst differing regions and ideas.
The work that inspired me to read more about this artist is titled Hello World! Or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise, an overwhelming video installation composed of over 5000 video diaries collected by the artist from the web. This piece forces the viewer to immerse themselves into the thoughts, minds, and faces of others. Spanning the length of a seemingly never ending wall, the video diaries are arranged to be small format, touching on all sides with other diary entries. Each one is unique and shares a personal story of an entirely different individual. The appeal of this image is the variety of perspectives it presents. Each person’s frame is made up of a different color scheme, affected by their background and surroundings. They sit in kitchens, living rooms, offices, and in beds and range from all different styles, socioeconomic statuses, ages, and conversation topics. Although each is a distinct and different situation and story, they all blend together to make a sea of noise made to overwhelm the viewer just as the size of the installation does. The clatter of voices combined with the size of the structure forces the viewer to attempt to make distinctions between the individual stories, yet forces them back into the immensity of the project as a whole.
This piece forces the onlooker to confront the faces of so many unknown stories and ideas. Many of these subjects create their video diaries as a way of releasing their ideas and perspectives on major issue to the public everywhere. They believe that what they have to say is just as important and interesting, yet there is no way, no tool, for us to search for their stories. The work asks the viewer to see others out there for their voice and their generic and blended existence. It poses the thought of, “If all of these stories exist, untold and unrecognized, there must be many more which are never discussed”. We also make the realization that we are apart of a collective whole, experiencing similar situations but at different times and in different contexts.
I feel that this project is extremely successful in relating the individual to a conicopia of others under that same impression: that they are also a unique individual. By creating a fully presented arrangement of so many identities, the viewer becomes more aware of what has not been discovered and how large this world may be. If I went to change one aspect of the work, I could consider altering or playing with the coloring in the individual diaries to create some sort of subtle uniformity amongst those sharing similar topics of discussion, etc. Overall I felt that the artist captured his idea of the unheard voice amongst a sea of never seen faces and its relation to how we each experience the world as the individual.
As I watched the video of the display for the first time, I felt a sense of overwhelmed observation and overwhelming connectivity to the world yet discovered. It is strange to stand in front of a work of art such as this, as it is a discussion of ourselves and those we will never meet. We are granted the opportunity to connect with not just one but thousands of lives that we will never know, simultaneously being pushed back out of every smaller frame to experience the immensity of the faces as a whole. In this sea we find our comfort, realizing that each story, however unique it may feel, is connect to the other.
Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.
No comments:
Post a Comment