ART 5930c: Digital Studio: Mapping and Place
Lesson 2 assignment 1
Looking at the works of the artist Sol Lewitt and Mel Bochner in particular and maps in general I chose a small installation piece in my apartment. It exists in a tiny corner of the living room and being that it has its own light source provides a glow at dinner time or while hanging out in the evening. The work plays on the idea of the painting frame as a window frame so it implies space and depth. A small piece of rusted metal simulates a moon, a doll face and faux column are weathered with a copper patina to imply antiquity, all of these are intended to create depth perspective and the illusion of space.
The work is very similar to some of the Cornell type pieces Bochner has done, which seem (coincidentally) to be striving for the exact same goals. Through some of the reading it becomes apparent that the biggest struggle maps face is accounting for three dimensions, essentially putting squares on a round planet. As well maps that present statistics like statistics, can be misleading or simply leading. The works of Bochner and my piece here presented play upon our western sense of order, and spatial syntax.
The nice round number of three inches was discovered when measuring the width of my hand and the zone could be easily estimated in topographical or aerial sense. As the thing exists in three dimension contour lines could be easily be assigned based on the three inch scale.
References
Mel Bochner Measurement.
- http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A625&page_number=9&template_id=1&sort_order=1 (Browse through the images. There may be some projects with no image.)
Google images
