Field Report #2: Act/React

One of the Act/React exhibits that I found most interesting and eerie at the same time was Janet Cardiif and George Bures Miller’s To Touch; where a table is set in the center of a dark room with the light centered on the table aloneFulfilling Duchamp’s creative act, the viewer is needed to complete the artwork by touching the table in order for the artwork to be completely understood of its unique creation. In my comparison to To Touch is Sissel Tolaas’s work with the sense of smell. Both works are, to me, considered to be interactive in that they are able to invite viewers to respond to the works and in return, how the works are able respond to their actions.
My experience with To Touch was with much anticipation of what is waiting for me to discover in the room from my knowledge of the previews of the Act/React exhibition shown in class as well as a feeling of curiosity and uneasiness when entering the display room. The entrance to the room is lengthy hall that ultimately leads to a darkened room with the only light shining on an old wooden table that has seen many days with paint and usage. It was the darkness and lengthy hall that built my curiosity of the art exhibition with every step that I took, making me question what I will see and how I will see it. Once I entered the room and saw only the table while everything else that was hiding in darkness, it held a kind of eeriness because of how it is set up in the room, it forced me to focus only on the table and what the table would provide to ease my curiosity’s hunger of what I’ve seen in class and what I want to discover. The table is only a table if one only looked, but it is not a table anymore once touched. I changed the table by touching the surface and moving my hand slowly only the ridged surface, and as I did, a voice spoke to me quietly and softly. As I prolonged the action of my hand across the surface of the table, more sounds would add to the voice; recognizable sounds from classic movies, dialogue from a man, etc. Once I remove my hand from the table, the sounds slowly diminish into silence and the table is once again, only a table in spotlight. Thus, the artwork gives me the power to control the sound that the table activates by my touch with my decision of how and where I want to touch or if I want to touch it at all. To Touch can be considered a work of art in that it is created in the artists’ mind with a sole purpose to be viewed by the willing audience, but art’s definition is so broad that it can be arguable that it is not. My viewpoint on the matter, however, is that art is in the eye of the beholder. What one thing that a person may view as art, another may disregard it as not art. So who really has the right of what to define art as?
Another piece of ‘artwork’ I’ve seen that invites the audience to interact is one that involves the sense of smell. Sissel Tolaas, a conceptual artist whose work explores the sense of smell traveled to different countries taking walks from small villages to big cities, collecting the different types of smell and then capturing them in bottles of perfume. Her list of smell ran from dog feces to people’s distinct smell of their natural body odor. She explored the different places in order to strengthen the knowledge of the importance of smell and how that sense affects us. By capturing these different smells, she was able to exhibit it in the most unexpected way; it was contained on white walls labeled as Wall 1 and so forth of different smells ingrained in different white walls. In order to smell the wall, one had to rub it and the odor would come off (so yeah, like a scratch and sniff sticker). I remember going to one of the walls that fused such a strong smell of human body odor that I had to cover my nose after a few seconds from entering the room. This very specific wall came along with a story that she told to audience. It was with this wall that that an old man was crying and his son asked him what was wrong, and when he was able to, he said it was the smell of the human body odor that reminded him of his time in the Vietnam War of the men he fought alongside with and the men that died. This very situation shows a great significance of the interactivity that was involved with the man and Tolaas’s wall in that the man was willing to discover the scent on the wall by rubbing the wall, and in return the scent on the wall transpired, igniting an old memory with the man. The walls with this example, is able to bring different reactions to each viewer with each person with a different experience or memory with a certain smell. This particular wall reminded me of smelly boys in grouped together in a confined space.
Both works involve one of the five human senses in each exhibition – the sense of touch and smell. They are both similar in that in order for the artwork to be complete, there has to be a willing audience to touch or smell the artwork to understand the artists’ works. If no one touched the table, who would ever know that there was sound activation on the surface? And if no one rubbed Tolaas’ walls that contained different odors, who would ever know that the plain white walls actually contained a scent? Thus, in order for their artworks to be complete, it calls for an audience to interact with the artwork in order for the work to be fully recognized as how it was created for.