In::FORMATION: Work by Sine::apsis Experiments
It is therefore a delight to report that there’s now a wonderful exhibit of works involving motors and computers and video and microprocessors and all the other things many have come to regard with suspicion. The eight installations–plus two more that were used as part of opening-night performances–at Betty Rymer are by the members of a Chicago-based collective, Sine::apsis Experiments, plus a few invited associates. Formed only two years ago and made up of recent School of the Art Institute graduates, the group has mounted a show that addresses most of the potential objections to such work.
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Many of the pieces are designed to clearly demonstrate how they function. Moreover, virtually everything was working when I made my visits. The artists, apparently recognizing the indifferent visual presentation of much technology-based work, have paid close attention to the details of their works’ appearance. Many of the pieces self-consciously reconsider the artist’s relationship to her work. And there are equal numbers of men and women here, though historically women have been underrepresented in technology-based art. Most of the work is gently, humorously self-effacing, which helps deflate the potential pomposity of huge agglomerations of machines. And lastly, the finest works are not devoid of mystery.
The viewer isn’t given the details of how Orellana’s machines were programmed, but we do see the drawings being made, and we see the results. Amy Youngs in Alchemical Bloom pays an almost obsessive attention to such clarity. At its center is a tank of liquid copper sulfate; hung from the ceiling at progressively lower levels, almost as if marching into the tank, are several bulbous structures made of copper wire–one of which is immersed in the tank’s center, becoming one of three electrodes. To the right is a machine showing a reading of the outdoor temperature; a motor attached to it, the labels tell us, changes the voltage delivered to the tank as the temperature changes. Large wires with clips–like jumper cables–connect a voltage box to the electrodes in the tank. The negative voltage in the bulbous wire structure attracts the positively charged metal ions in the liquid, which attach to it. Hung on a wall near the tank are several wire structures encrusted with hundreds of tiny copper beads, the result of past weeks’ electroplating.
Daniel Wayne Miller’s Colony is a giant image-making machine that also pokes fun at high art. Three huge “robot loader mechanisms” move above a ten-by-ten-foot circular platform dropping green foam pieces, wax, or a soil-and-seed mix–“struggl[ing] to co-create a surface,” as Huginin writes in the catalog. A hose occasionally sprays water on the mess. The movement of each loader and the timing of its deposits are somewhat random; new patterns are constantly being created. The green foam looks like Styrofoam but is in fact corn-based and biodegradable: the older foam pieces in Colony are much smaller than the new ones, and some seem to have liquefied, turning into stains. Meanwhile the wax forms towers, and tiny grasses grow in the soil. Looking a bit like a construction site, the piece does recall, in Huginin’s words, “earthmovers, despoiled land, and systems run amuck.” Its mounds, stains, and general chaos are a world apart from ideals of aesthetic perfection.
