Project Plan

Over the past few weeks we have listened to many different artists of visual who use various tools to display their work from projection, to display and even installation. One thing all of these visionaries have in common is the fact that they all are using technology of some sort to help the audience interact with their work. The message of their art is so important to them that they had to figure out a way to immerse the viewer with more than just a glace. Take for example a recent speaker we had to the class Mr. Ian Campbell. Ian is a Video Mixer, or VJ for short. Ian's view on both visual media and music is that they should coexist and they should compliment each other, that can only be done by using his VJ'ing tools to express the message he is trying to portray.

Its artists such as Ian Campbell that have me questioning what kind of art I would like to create. I would obviously want my art to be visually pleasing but what kind of inspiration could I find to really take the whole viewing experience as a whole to the next level. My inspiration really came from what I feel the most connection with when it comes to not only visual art but also audio entertainment as well. I began thinking of a topic that would capture peoples attention, something that would touch people emotionally to not only have a visual presentation but also an emotional connection so the viewer would feel that much closer to the art presentation.

For my project plan I wanted to have two large beams of light, preferably at or near ground zero of the 9/11 attacks for the first presentation, and then all across the United States and eventually most of the major locations across North America. The beams of light would have to be very tall and be visual for as high as possible to have the most amount of people see it. These two beams of light not only symbolize what was lost during the 9/11 attacks but what the attacks changed in the world. The messages would be from those who had loved ones in or directly effected by the attacks, these messages could be letters to the dead, memories of their lost loved ones or just their name and birth day. Any kind of personal information or messages could pass through the beams. While thinking of this fairly simple idea I thought that there was a way to make this project a lot more personal to the individuals looking at it. I wanted to use some type of projection large enough to display messages in the beams of light. I remembered back to seeing a video of some Graffiti artists who had hired a small airplane to use smoke signals in the air display their Graffiti names in the air so they looked like clouds and I remember thinking that this was an ingenious idea for getting your art out there. I also remembered back to seeing a video of an amazing piece of technology in China where there would be flowing water, and using a program displaying words and symbols in the falling water. I thought both of these ideas would work very well in a visual art presentation. It would be best that for this presentation there could be a clearly marked "best view" angle of the messages slowly passing through the beams of light. This would not only allow for people to all come together to remember and commemorate the losses and morn the dead but also as a place to present the second part of the project.

During the messages passing through the beams of light I would want some type of performance to be happening simultaneously. I find that music is a language that all people from every walk of life can relate to. I believe there is no one person one this planet that cant relate to music in an emotional way. This aspect of the presentation would not only set the tone for the whole performance but it would also be an interesting experiment to see which kinds of music make the viewer feel sad and which music made the viewer feel optimistic about the future.

The purpose of this project was to use creative technology to symbolically represent one of the worst terrorist attacks in the past 20 years. The emotionally connection that North Americans have with this event is unprecedented. This is the perfect canvas for a social experiment into the connection between the human mind/ emotions and art/ performing arts. The words being displayed on the beams of light tied to the music during the presentation could almost be related to Ian Campbell's with work Vj'ing. The ethical or culture questions that would be raised during this experiment are quite obvious. The fact that this art exhibit is related to such a historic event in the United States' history it would most certainly raise a fair amount of discussion and rehash some issues or conversations that people had once or possibly still have about this topic/ issue.

As "for out" as this idea may seem I think it would be a very fun and touching topic to look back on and use some technology to try and see the reactions we get from these new research methods. Using this idea as my project plan has the potential to turn into a world wide phenomenon; With the power of You Tube and other social networking sites the view of my creative technology project would be seen across whole cities by viewers in person and possibly millions more online by anyone who chooses to record any of the messages or the whole presentation and put it on You Tube. At the core this idea has such an emotional tie to it that it could not simply be dismissed.