outdoor/indoor/outdoor outdoor/indoor/outdoor is a site-specific installation, inspired by and constructed specifically for the rooftop gallery at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art. When I was first shown the floor plan of the space, I was told that it would be on the roof of the new wing of the museum, which was still under construction, and that it would be surrounded by walls on all four sides. This seemed to me to be a very ambiguous space-- it could be considered either an outdoor gallery, with walls, or an indoor gallery, with no roof. After considering several sculptural options, I decided to not only use that ambiguity, but to make it the central focus of the installation, one that combines several of my interests. The work consists of three pieces of carved wooden furniture, made life-size from a 1950’s dollhouse that my sister had when I was a child-- a very formal sofa, chair, and large console TV, made of cheap, hollow plastic. An all-American living room. I have simply scaled this set of furniture up to full size, and constructed them out of unpainted yellow pine-- a somewhat surprising material. A further surprise is that the television screen is actually a lens focused on a mirror inside the set at a 45-degree angle, aimed up through a window in the top of the set. In other words, the TV screen plays nothing but the sky above-- blue sky, clouds, birds passing by. Installed under each carved “cushion” in the sofa and chair is a device called a tactile transducer, a sort of audio speaker which transmits sound not through the air but through solid material, including human tissue and bone. The sounds encountered while sitting in the furniture are those of weather and nature: thunderstorms, and birds singing. Although these sounds can be heard from anywhere in the space (and even inside the museum), it produces a literally thunderous effect only to those seated, rumbling the body and brain. The basic idea of this work is that the viewer/listener goes outside, to do what one normally does inside (sit and watch TV), to look at and listen to the outside. This work has several simultaneous intentions. Basically, my aim is to use the ambiguous character of the space to explore our somewhat ambiguous feelings toward “Nature”. It is obvious, when in the rooftop courtyard, that one is not “inside”. There is simply no roof, the most basic part of any shelter. However, it is a very protected-feeling space, despite the concrete walls not making the place feel especially homey. It is also possible to conceive of the space as a room with an infinitely high ceiling, the sky as the ceiling. It is possible to see the room in many different ways, which is what I like about it. One of my goals for this project is for the viewer to take into consideration how they normally do conceive of and react to spaces as they move through them. While it is definitely not indoor, it is not quite the normal “outdoors”. Because it is made of concrete, and isolated from and elevated above its surroundings, the gallery seems to be isolated from what we normally think of as “Nature”- grass, trees, life. And, in my opinion, this is how we as a culture really like it. We have always preferred our Nature controllable. I am not even thinking of the more obvious cases of environmental use, the conquering or abuse of the natural world for short-term (or even long-term) gain, nor the scientific and technological compartmentalization the world. I am thinking of our culture’s everyday attitudes toward nature, including the enjoyment of it. As our houses become more and more hermetically sealed, our food more and more chemically processed, and we become more reliant, probably counterproductively, on antibiotic soaps and chemical cleansing agents, we continue to see the natural world as something dirty, to be avoided, until we decide to set aside time to go “visit” it. We set aside times-- and places-- in which to see a pure Nature, while taking pains to avoid it in our day-to-day lives. And even during our visits to always-crowded Natural Parks, we expect the government to keep us safe from all danger, inconvenience, and anything unexpected. We like our Nature compartmentalized, if not actually mediated. Even our attempts to protect Nature often focus on setting aside “pure” and isolated parcels of land. However, my intent for this artwork is not to make a blatant environmental statement, a call to protect Nature from big corporations and greedy consumers. One of my interests has always been the basic features and activities of human life-- houses, furniture, small daily rituals. Domesticity; what we do here on Earth. What I’ve tried to do, with this installation, is use the uncertainty of the space to create an uncertain line between what we consider inside and outside, in our own houses, and in our daily lives. By contrasting an almost clichéd version of American suburban domestic life with the natural world by placing it outside, I hope to bring attention to how distant we actually are from the world we depend on and coexist with, by putting it on TV, and sweeping the sound-- recorded sound-- under the furniture. I have placed a level of mediation between the viewer/listener and the nature around them, which they are already in, and already were in. By witnessing nature through a TV screen and the furniture, it may be made apparent how far the natural world around us has become, and yet how near it has always been. But there is another way to regard this installation, one closely related to, but almost the reverse of, this first interpretation. There is a reciprocal aspect to my original idea, which I hadn’t considered until I’d installed it, sat in the chair, and stared at the blank TV screen (there were no clouds that day, just an empty blue screen): just how does the media-- real TV, movies, commercials-- influence our expectations of an “unmediated Natural experience”? That is, is such a thing even possible to 21st-century Americans and Westerners? Considering the hours spent in our real living rooms, watching TV, how do media images and schema influence what we now expect from an encounter with Nature? Many mental images of the pleasures or dangers of a day in the outdoors undoubtedly come from those fed to us for the purpose of selling us goods (L.L. Bean advertisements) or entertainment (Twister, Deliverance, Jeremiah Johnson). The question is, after endless hours of exposure to these images, is there an expected emotional payoff to the effort of packing up and hiking somewhere isolated? (And the act of packing up for a special day is, as I mentioned, already making Nature a separated, compartmentalized, thing.) Is there a disappointment when that payoff is not achieved? There are no ticks or sunburns in L.L. Bean ads. Where was the laughter with beautiful people, or the cathartic journey of self-discovery? It is certainly easy to over-estimate the influence of the media on our mental lives (which is another discussion entirely), but the idealized situations repeatedly put into our minds are bound to have some residual effect. |